Poem Central : Word Journeys with Readers and Writers [1 ed.] 9781625310101, 9781571109637

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POEM CENTRAL

Thank you for purchasing this Stenhouse e-book; we appreciate the opportunity to help you become an even more effective teacher. This e-book is for your own individual use: you may print one copy for your own personal use and you can access your e-book on multiple personal devices, including computers, e-readers, and smartphones. However, you cannot make print or digital copies to share with others, nor may you post this e-book on any server, website, or other digital or online system. If you would like permission to distribute or post sections of this e-book, please contact Stenhouse at [email protected]. If you would like to see a full list of the e-books Stenhouse offers, please visit us at www.stenhouse/allebooks

POEM CENTRAL WORD JOURNEYS WITH READERS AND WRITERS

SHIRLEY MCPHILLIPS

Stenhouse Publishers www.stenhouse.com Copyright © 2014 by Shirley McPhillips All rights reserved. This e-book is intended for individual use only. You can print a copy for your own personal use and you can access this e-book on multiple personal devices (i.e. computer, e-reader, smartphone). You may not reproduce digital copies to share with others, post a digital copy on a server or a website, make photocopies for others, or transmit in any form by any other means, electronic or mechanical, without permission from the publisher. Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders and students for permission to reproduce borrowed material. We regret any oversights that may have occurred and will be pleased to rectify them in subsequent reprints of the work. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McPhillips, Shirley. Poem central : word journeys with readers and writers / Shirley McPhillips. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-57110-963-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-62531-010-1 (ebook) 1. Poetry-Study and teaching--United States. 2. Poetry--Authorship--Study and teaching--United States. I. Title. PN1101.M37 2014 808.1--dc23 2013044432 Cover design and interior design by Blue Design, Portland, Maine (www.bluedes.com) Cover photo: Grand Central Terminal, New York City by John Collier, Jr., 1941. Manufactured in the United States of America

20 19 18 17 16 15 14 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To the poets, who turn on all the lights.

REMEMBERING SEAMUS HEANEY (1939–2013) Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests. I’ll dig with it. —FROM “DIGGER” IN DEATH OF A NATURALIST

CONTENTS

WITH GRATITUDE PART 1: COMING INTO A WORLD OF POETRY POEMS THAT SPEAK TO US THE SOIL OF POETRY BUILDING UP A FRIENDSHIP WITH POETRY: STRUCTURES AND RITUALS POETRY MTWTF (AKA POETRY FRIDAY) YOUNG POETS BLOGGING PART 2: READING A POEM: AN IMMENSE INTIMACY THE SHAPE OF IT TITLES LEADING US INTO A POEM THE MUSIC OF IT: READING FOR SOUND CONNECTING WITH A POEM DEALING WITH DIFFICULTY POEM TALK WHO IS THE SPEAKER IN A POEM? PART 3: FINDING POEMS, MAKING POEMS DANCES WITH WORDS POEMS WAITING TO BE FOUND LINE BY LINE

THE OCCASIONAL POEM POEMS FOR ALL SEASONS POETS FACING ART: EKPHRASTIC POEMS PUTTING ON THE MASK: PERSONA POEMS HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU: HOMAGE POEMS THE GREAT SHOUT-OUT: INVECTIVE POEMS WRITING IN THE WAKE OF A POEM POEM CENTRAL: THE MYSTERY AND MIRACLE OF WORDS

RESOURCES FOR TEACHERS AND STUDENTS REFERENCES CREDITS INDEX

WITH GRATITUDE NOT I, NOT I, BUT THE WIND THAT BLOWS THROUGH ME. —from “Song of a Man Who Has Come Through” by D. H. Lawrence

Every turn of the page in this book sings with the generosity and gifts of all those who came alongside for the journey. Your endless goodwill is fuel for all that leaps and follows. Thank you, ever and ever. Gratitude: To the poets, then and now, whose words inspire and instruct us well. The names you see throughout this book represent all the voices “leaving indelible trails.” Special contributions from Lana Hechtman Ayers, Mary Alexandra Agner, Jenni B. Baker, Ellen Bass, Hester Bass, Norma Bernstock, Ginny Lowe Connors, Liesl Dineen, Molly Frederick, Leslie Kenna, Diane Lockward, Mekeel McBride, Bruce McRae, Drew Myron, Bradley Paul, Doris Rosenthal, Lloyd Schwartz, and Pamela Spiro Wagner. To the artists who lend grace and delight to these pages: Ron Barrett, Hank Gans, Brooke Hopkins, Shuli Pilo, and Eli Rosenthal. To friends who stay. Often when I had to say “no,” socially and to other projects, they said “yes” and blessed me with their creative talents and stories. Especially: Janet Angelillo, Barbara Caldwell, A. R. Homer, Carol Kellogg, Jules Peemoeller, Erel Pilo, Shuli Pilo, Louise Sasaki, Marianna Simpson, Susan Porter Tall, Linda Van Orden, and Michelle Fang. To colleagues whose fierce hearts and brave teaching light the way. For generosity way beyond the call: Chris Kostenko, Jason Parkhurst, and Erika Zeccardi. To students, too many to mention here, whose honesty and willingness to “give it a go” shine in their poems you will read. To family members who cheerfully joined the effort of this book and put their unique stamp on poetics: Phyllis Dodds, Eve Powell, and Sean McPhillips. To all the villagers at Stenhouse who rallied round the author and the project with sensitivity, vigor, skill, and … good humor! Especially: editor and friend Maureen Barbieri, whose keen eyes and ears elevate the text, and whose generous heart and love of poetry inspired my effort throughout; Jill Cooley, whose expertise and patience gave me “permission” to forge ahead; Chris Downey, whose sharp skills found answers; and Philippa Stratton, who spied a book in a blog.

PART 1

COMING INTO A WORLD OF POETRY FROM TENTATIVE DEFINITIONS OF POETRY Poetry is a journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly the air. Poetry is a pack-sack of invisible keepsakes. Poetry is a series of explanations of life, fading off into horizons too swift for explanations. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a theorem of a yellow-silk handkerchief knotted with riddles, sealed in a balloon tied to the tail of a kiteflying in a white wind against a blue sky in spring. Poetry is the silence and speech between a wet struggling root of a flower and a sunlit blossom of that flower. Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during a moment. Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits. —CARL SANDBURG (1970, 317–319) Once Mrs. Melville, wife of the author of Moby-Dick, wrote a letter to her mother: Herman has taken to writing poetry. You need not tell anyone, for you know how such things get around. (Rukeyser 1996, 10) When I started researching for this book, I had the feeling that in many ways poetry was still in hiding. It seems a difficult challenge in the hurly burly of life to find a spot where the seeds of poetry might sprout. Or, it’s a frilly ruffle, an emotional muddle, a mysterious rune. If it’s anything at all. And yet, there are those who believe America is experiencing a poetry renaissance, with more readings and workshops and books and MFA programs than we can shake a stick at. Others argue that this belief gives us a superficial picture of the real place of poetry in our culture. At this point I’m optimistic. And often inspired. Granted, in many places the seeds of poetry

are moldy, the earth depleted. But in some places poetry still springs from organic soil. The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering celebrated its thirtieth anniversary in January 2014 in Elko, Nevada. Thousands joined musicians, artists, and poets to share a love of rural life in the West. (For a treat, watch respected cowboy poet Joel Nelson recite the classic poem “Lasca” by Frank Desprez at http://www.westernfolklife.org.) In other places opportunities for poetry pop up like dandelions in early spring. That longedfor yellow after a long winter. Madeline Schwartzman, professor of architecture and filmmaker, gets on a New York City subway train each day and asks complete strangers to write a poem in her notebook. She’s on her fifth notebook with over a hundred poems. Often, connections are made in that moment that go far beyond the subway ride. (Visit Schwartzman and read some daily poems by New Yorkers at http://www.poemsbynewyorkers.com.) As I will show in later sections, the Internet can be a place for the worst poetry and the best. But it’s out there, and thousands of people are engaged. Poetry websites, poetry blogs, poetry organizations, poetry prompts, poetry slams, poetry skypes, poetry forums, poetry goodreads, poetry newsletters, poems-a-day, poetry podcasts, poetry columns, poetry getaways, poetry profiles, “Poem Sunday,” on and on. I lean in with Yusef Komunyakaa, who writes in The Eye of the Poet, “By all signs, poetry in America seems to be alive and well … This is the case because, in part, poets themselves have become mentors, teachers, workshop instructors, and curators, and are active in poetry organizations. Together, a poet and a group of initiates cherish the art that sustains them” (in Citino 2001, 148). Our national poets laureate, who serve as Consultants in Poetry at the Library of Congress, have found practical and creative ways to engage the public. Robert Pinsky’s “The Favorite Poem Project” acknowledged the impact of poetry in our everyday lives by asking people to share their favorite poems with fellow Americans. You can access videos, online resources, and an archive of Americans’ favorite poems at http://www.favoritepoem.org. Ted Kooser founded “American Life in Poetry” (http://www.americanlifeinpoetry.com). To create a presence for poetry in our lives, to help poets reach a wider audience, he writes a free weekly column for newspapers and online periodicals that features a poem from a contemporary American poet. Billy Collins founded “Poetry 180” (http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180) to foster poetry in schools. Teachers and students can read aloud a poem a day, view a poem a day online, print them out, or purchase collections of yearly offerings (see “Resources for Teachers and Students”). This is a great way of introducing and supporting young readers as they make their way into a world of poetry. In order to acknowledge and support the work of community colleges, Kay Ryan held a video conference and poetry contest, titled “Poetry for the Mind’s Joy,” for students from community colleges across the land. You can find webcasts and poems online at http://www.loc.gov/poetry/mindsjoy. Current Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey has set up “office hours” when she meets with members of the general public to discuss poetry. Her PBS NewsHour features, among her other projects, continue to show the crucial role poetry plays in people’s lives. An image from the

first program stays in my mind: Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York. A group of children inside a circle of Alzheimer’s patients and caregivers, all reciting Wordsworth. You may ask, Do many poetry books get published? I’m not sure of the facts, but as I write this, Poets House in New York, in its annual showcase of poetry books released in the past year, is displaying nearly 3,000 books by about 700 different publishers. This seems to offer a lining of light at the edge of that perennial poetry doomcloud. While all this good news lifts us up, of course we want more. There are those for whom poetry is a distant star. So we have to do better. Our hope for poetry lives in how we nurture our young people. As teachers, we need to experience for ourselves what we hope to inspire. Or, as bluesman Charlie “Bird” Parker once said, “If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn” (Reisner 1977, 27). I never wanted to teach out of “cold storage,” to remove myself to some protective place away from the necessary struggles that any creative endeavor requires. To be a partner in learning with students and other adults has always kept learning alive for me. Workshops, seminars, and getaways for adults searching for the poet within them are many, and growing. People go to explore what poets Ellen Bass and Kim Rosen in their workshops call “the inspiration of hearing poetry, the power of speaking poetry, and the craft of writing poetry” (Bass and Rosen 2013). One of poetry’s gifts, for me, is the nourishment of an inner life—the outside brought in, rearranged, and sent back out again. It is a meeting place for the objects and activity of the outside world and the inner world of consciousness and imagination. Recognizing, attuning, reaching out, connecting, responding. This is the place for poetry; this is the attitude of poetry. This is how it shows us a way we might face life. Luckily, Mrs. Melville, “such things” do still get around.

SOMETHING ABOUT THIS BOOK The first important thing to understand about this book—and it will be evident throughout—is that it is based on my belief that poetry is not an academic subject but an art. And therefore it belongs where life is. Everything discussed or demonstrated is based on the hope that teachers and students will find, read, and write poems for themselves as life brings them opportunity and need. It’s not so complicated for teachers to influence the lives of students in poetry, or anything else: show them what you love with all the passion you can muster. We all remember those who inspired us, and we know how they did. If people feel fearful of poetry or even if the door to poetry is only slightly ajar, then I hope the company they keep with folks in this book will give them courage to peek in. Or pull up a chair, sit for a time. For some of the people in this book, poetry is life. For others, poetry is not a long tradition, but they’ve made a start. They have copied from books, or the Internet, and started a collection in a folder. No books, they went to the library or to a colleague to borrow. No one to talk to, they sent a homemade card with a poem inside with an invitation for coffee. They joined poetry organizations and signed up for a poem-a-day by e-mail. No like-minded

group, they took part in poetry blogs, wrote for online poetry prompts; they sent out fliers to meet over wine and cheese after school—and brought a poem or two. The teachers we meet in this book have brought that zeal into the classroom. “Show them what you love.” Finally, I haven’t counted, but if you read this book through you will have scores of adult and student poems of the highest quality to enjoy and a host of ways to use them. And though a poem may be featured, say, in a section on “persona poems,” it can just as well be used to look at the “speaker,” or to “feel the effect,” or look at “lines.” Though I wanted to, there wasn’t space enough to include the whole of every poem I mention. But I hope you will search for them. In today’s world, they’re easy to find. Also, I use a lot of quotes from writers I greatly admire. These are carefully selected— many from works suggested in this book—and shared in places where they support the conversation at hand. I hope these words inspire and instruct as we take them in and share them with our students.

THE VOICES IN THIS BOOK Since the ancients, information—wisdom, knowledge, news—has been carried along on the wings of a story. So I decided, for this book, to gather together a range of people— professional poets, inspired teachers, fledgling and seasoned artists and illustrators, musicians on the riff, feisty retirees, careful editors, brave students, folks hanging out on the Internet—sit them down in the catbird seat, and let the stories begin. They tell about such things as how they first met a poem, their delights and struggles with poetry, the role of poetry in their lives. They share how they find poems, how they read, respond to, and fashion them. They show how they demonstrate and nudge and nourish others in poetry. Their stories inspire and instruct me well. In many of them, I recognize some aspect of myself, as I am or as I would like to be. I think readers will be inspired too.

NAVIGATING THE BOOK I have divided the book into three big segments: Part 1, Coming into a World of Poetry; Part 2, Reading a Poem: An Immense Intimacy; and Part 3, Finding Poems, Making Poems. Within each part, instead of chapters, I’ve written a piece as a lead-in followed by short sections on some aspect of poetry work. You will find background information on the subject at hand and demonstration of the poetry work being done, by adults and in the classroom. At the end of most sections are short lists of resources. There are many more suggestions in the “Resources for Teachers and Students” section at the back of the book as well. Some “oldies but goodies,” many new. These are a dip in the well of resources that have nourished some of my colleagues and me. There are so many out there, ever changing. You will find them. Although the topics listed in each part are not meant to suggest a linear sequence of study, I would say that the topics in Parts 1 and 2 can serve as a foundation to the topics in Part 3. The making of poems depends upon experience with poems and a valuing of life experience.

Sections in Part 3 are meant to take us into some fresh forms for making poems out of our lived lives. And to have a little fun. Poem central.

A WORD ABOUT CRAFT There are many books out there dedicated to the craft of writing, including writing poetry. Some titles are listed in the resource sections of this book. I believe, also, that we can be instructed about craft from a close reading of any poem. So, rather than isolate elements of craft, I thought it might be helpful to talk about craft—poetic devices and how they are used in making poems—right within the text when we’re discussing poems. Readers may apprentice themselves to people featured in the sections of this book by listening to their accounts and watching what they do and how they do it. For example, in the section “The Music of It: Reading for Sound,” we’re also noticing word choice, line endings, punctuation, and white space. When we’re reading the section “Dealing with Difficulty,” we’re looking at the work of metaphor and simile and the effect of shape and surface features. In the section “Putting on the Mask: Persona Poems,” students and teachers show their notebook work and drafts, in some cases talking us through their thinking processes. Also, in some sections, laypeople and professionals alike give us invaluable insights into their ways of working on a specific poem. For example, in “Line by Line,” professional poets Ellen Bass and Diane Lockward take us through one of their poems to show us how they decide on line endings. In the section “Poems for All Seasons,” Calley, a classroom teacher, describes her personal inquiry about haiku. In “Poems Facing Art: Ekphrastic Poems,” Jeremy demonstrates his work with students writing from a painting. In the section “Putting on the Mask: Persona Poems,” Mia, a fifth-grade student, shows how she works to embody the spirit and tone of Nefertiti.

INSIDE THE CLASSROOM In order to show poetry at work in people’s lives and in the life of the classroom, I use vignettes, short stories, and glimpses of poetry work in action. Some of my examples are gleaned from teachers and students I’ve been fortunate to learn from in over fifteen years of staff development. So when I describe a scene or quote someone, I am being accurate to the best of my notes or recollection. In some cases, more recently, I’ve had an opportunity to take part in classroom poetry work, conduct interviews, and collect samples. Usually, with written work, I am working from transcribed photocopies of students’ writer’s notebooks or finished pieces. Sometimes I have only the poem gem I’ve kept in my folder over the years. In each case I have tried to locate the source of a piece of writing but, alas, have not always succeeded because over time young writers have grown and teachers have moved on. Please contact me if you are one of the writers I mention but have not been able to reach; I’d be grateful to hear from you and glad to give credit in subsequent reprints. So, let’s begin this book with a message from poet and mentor Naomi Shihab Nye:

I became a poet because of poetry’s great mystery and partly because of a second-grade teacher I had who believed poetry was at the center of the universe. (Nye 1983, 7) Welcome to Poem central. Here is your “Poetic License.”

POEMS THAT SPEAK TO US THERE IS ONE KIND OF KNOWLEDGE … INFINITELY PRECIOUS, TIME-RESISTANT MORE THAN MONUMENTS, HERE TO BE PASSED BETWEEN THE GENERATIONS IN ANY WAY IT MAY BE … AND THAT IS POETRY. —Muriel Rukeyser (1996, 13)

After 9/11, Union Square in New York City, among other places, was papered with poems. Not short stories, not essays, not editorials. Poems. Only poems would do. C. D. Wright said it: “It is the function of poetry to locate those zones inside us that would be free, and declare them so” (1999). Messages from the “deep heart’s core” (Yeats 1956, 39) hung out for all to share in this common spot. People stood in full sun to gaze and drink in the only words that seemed to help slake a deep thirst. They stood at night in the flaming shadows of candlelight—silence filling the whole air—seeking solace, wisdom, hope, in words they recognized by “heart.”

WORD ENCOUNTERS OF A SPECIAL KIND LET YOURSELF BE SILENTLY DRAWN BY THE STRONGER PULL OF WHAT YOU REALLY LOVE. IT WILL NOT LEAD YOU ASTRAY. —Rumi (2006, 121)

Over the last months, as I’ve been immersed in thought about this book, I have talked to people of different ages, from different walks of life, about poems in their lives. I’ve asked them the same questions I ask students. What was your first encounter with a poem you felt connected to? What was it about that poem? Was it a onetime flicker of interest or has a poem stayed with you? Have you ever lived with a poem? As you read these stories, you will be knowing and delighted, amused and surprised, sometimes moved to tears. No doubt you’ll see something of yourself. Finally, let’s think about how these stories might inspire us to kindle or rekindle a life with poetry. Or remind us of our good fortune for poetry in our lives. Having that, what will we pass on to our own children? Our friends and family? As teachers what will we pass on to our students? What the environment, the circumstances? What the rituals and habits? By what experiences and examples? As we read the following personal stories, let us, as Naomi Shihab Nye has said, “think of poets over the ages sending their voices out into the sky, leaving quiet, indelible trails.”

Marianna, a theatrical lighting specialist, has always wanted her life to add up. “I read poems that soothe me in times of strife, depression, fear, and doubt. I don’t seem to read them during times when things are going swimmingly.” She remembers poems coming to her rescue at different stages of life: Whitman’s Leaves of Grass at seventeen, an awareness of the many dormant facets of her psyche sending her on a path pursuing unusual adventures; Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” understanding that she didn’t want to live her life on automatic pilot. Now, as president of the local nature center, Marianna connects with Mary Oliver. “She writes about endangered species losing their fragile habitats. I feel her words are my own.”

Jason, a fifth-grade teacher, says his poetry life doesn’t have a long history. Songwriters were his favorite poets. The plain language in Joni Mitchell’s song “A Case of You.” “On the back of a cartoon coaster / in the blue TV screen light / I drew a map of Canada / with your face sketched on it twice” (1971). Skipping from nursery rhymes to adulthood, he first put his attention to poems when he worked with a staff developer who loved poetry. As a teacher, the first book of poems he bought was Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry (2003), an anthology of contemporary poems selected and introduced by America’s Poet Laureate at the time, Billy Collins. Jason enjoyed this collection and brought many of the poems to school. One that tugged at his heartstrings was “The High School Band in September” by Reed Whittemore (1990). “This poem makes me think of a circle, the passing of time,” Jason said. Here is that poem: THE HIGH SCHOOL BAND IN SEPTEMBER Qn warm days in September the high school band Is up with the birds and marches along our street, Boom boom, To a field where it goes boom boom until eight forty-five When it marches, as in the old rhyme, back, boom boom, To its study halls, leaving our street Empty except for the leaves that descend To no drum And lie still. In September

A great many high school bands beat a great many drums And the silences after their partings are very deep. Jason has reread this poem many times. “Now, it’s like a heartbeat, life booming and drumming by. The passing of time and dreams, like the leaves falling—the way it should be.”

Carol, a retired insurance executive, was introduced to poetry in fourth grade. Her teacher “tossed math and science out of the curriculum window and devoted the entire school year to music, art, and poetry.” (Can you imagine? Public school too.) “While we passively listened to Chopin and looked at prints of the Old Masters in her art books, we participated in poetry. We memorized and recited before the class poems we had selected on our own.” As she grew older, Carol discovered Edna St. Vincent Millay. She remembers, “Millay wrote so eloquently about love and loss in her lyrical works and sonnets. She managed to say exactly what I was feeling but didn’t know quite how to express. Now, in the autumn of my life, I ponder the time I have left and how to spend it. I connect with poets like Billy Collins [2003a] when I read ‘The Parade.’ And A.E. Housman’s [1896] ‘Loveliest of trees the cherry now.’” Carol also connects with her husband, A. R. Homer, when he writes this: How many more swift circlings of the sun? Who counts brief days, by whose abacus done? Who cuts each notch, who calculates my score? How many springs and summers have I more? And this day, not a thing done, I confess. How grimly marks the scorer: one day less.

Deval, a culinary school graduate, likes the blues and plays guitar. “That’s been pretty much my kind of poetry. Although my grandmother quoted Countee Cullen and Paul Laurence Dunbar: ‘I know what the caged bird feels, alas’ [1913].” But something changed in Deval’s senior year in college. Smitten by a certain young woman, he tried to impress her with his musical talent. “I wound up embarrassing her in front of her friends and everybody else outside the movie theater. She turned her back on me so fast, made my head swim.” His erudite former roommate, “tired of the doom cloud following me around all day, slipped me a copy of Langston Hughes’s ‘Acceptance’.” Perfect. Deval emailed his ladylove this poem: God in His infinite wisdom

Did not make me very wise— So when my actions are stupid They hardly take God by surprise. —LANGSTON HUGHES (2001, 225) She responded with Hughes’s “Dreams.” By that time Deval had to find more Langston Hughes in order to talk to this girl. “I got so into it I memorized a whole list of his poems in case they came in handy.” Pleased with Langston’s ability to keep the conversation going, Deval sent “Juke Box Love Song.” She responded with “Dreamer” (2001). “Do you understand my dream?”

Jules Peemoeller, engineer-teacher-artist, says his home, growing up, “had zero poetry.” A reader of prose, he can’t remember one single poem that influenced or stuck with him. The only poem he remembers from school was Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” and even then only the title. As for writing, spelling and grammar always got in the way of anything requiring more than a minimum of words. In the summer of 1968 Jules bought a blank book in a fancy Venetian paper store and began to record the lines he was writing on cards he designed and sent to friends. This is the first poem he wrote back then in his “fancy blank book”: 1968 YEAR’S END AND START At the start of twelve it was the end At the end of twelve it was the start Slowly through fire and fury a rocket reaches for space The time of Columbus is past the age of stars is present A tree falls and a seed scatters the tree is dead the seed is life If you travel the circle once you will end at the start

Chinese poems have survived partly because of their brevity. They were memorized, recited, passed down. That’s how they found many children. But how did the children find the poems that stayed for life? Michelle came to the United States from China in 1992. Over tea on my porch, she recalls being part of that tradition, reciting, at a very young age, the great poems by ancient Chinese masters. “A Tranquil Night,” written by Li Bai, one of the greatest poets in the Tang Dynasty thirteen hundred years ago, was always in their textbooks in the primary grades. “It is so beautifully written,” she says, “that it is really beyond any language translation.” Michelle says she knew nothing at the time about the meaning of this poem, not its mood nor concept, until she was eighteen years old. While she was in primary school, the country was experiencing the chaos of the Cultural Revolution under Mao Zedong. From grades three through five, children were not allowed to read their Chinese textbooks. The only poems they learned were Mao’s! (“He was not a bad poet,” says she.) “Foreign poems,” she recalls, “were strictly forbidden too, thus hand-copied foreign poems became popular among young people and one of our favorite quotes I still remember is: ‘If winter comes, can spring be far behind?’ by British poet Percy Bysshe Shelley” (1820, 188– 192). During the Cultural Revolution, high school graduates were unable to go to college or university. Michelle remembers they were sent to factories or forced to the rural countryside for so-called “reeducation” by farmers. “Day in and day out,” she says, “the hard labor made my body ache, but the racing mind during all those sleepless nights brought the painfulness even deeper, the lonely soul far, far away from the home with no future and no hope. But on quiet nights under the cold moon, only then did I fully absorb Li Bai’s poem.” Here are two different translations of “A Tranquil Night” by Li Bai. I read them imagining the eighteen-year-old Michelle, “the lonely soul” out under the stars, whose only company was these words. A TRANQUIL NIGHT Abed, I see a silver light, I wonder if it’s frost aground. Looking up, I find the moon bright; Bowing, in homesickness I’m drowned. —LI BAI TRANSLATED BY XU YUAN-ZHONG (1992, 125) NIGHT THOUGHTS I wake, and moonbeams play around my bed,

Glittering like hoar-frost to my wandering eyes; Up towards the glorious moon I raise my head, Then lay me down—and thoughts of home arise. —LI BAI TRANSLATED BY HERBERT A. GILES (1898, 60)

A FORCE THAT FUELS THE RIGHT READER OF A GOOD POEM CAN TELL THE MOMENT IT STRIKES HIM THAT HE HAS TAKEN AN IMMORTAL WOUND—THAT HE WILL NEVER GET OVER IT. —Robert Frost (1925)

Right now, where life has set me down, I take inspiration, and life instruction, still and always, from William Stafford. From his many poems to consider, one stands out to me. YOU READING THIS, BE READY Starting here, what do you want to remember? How sunlight creeps along a shining floor? What scent of old wood hovers, what softened sound from outside fills the air? Will you ever bring a better gift for the world than the breathing respect that you carry wherever you go right now? Are you waiting for time to show you some better thoughts? When you turn around, starting here, lift this new glimpse that you found; carry into evening all that you want from this day. This interval you spent reading or hearing this, keep it for life— What can anyone give you greater than now, starting here, right in this room, when you turn around? —WILLIAM STAFFORD (1992, 45)

I keep a copy of this poem on my fridge and on my desk—a postcard with a picture of Stafford sent to me by Naomi Nye at a moment of change in my life. I give it out to friends for sundry reasons. Even to perfect strangers. A few years after my husband passed away and I took up communicating with gentlemen online, on a first date I would test the temperature of possible future waters. I would type this poem on a small piece of patterned paper, sign in calligraphy, and roll and tie it with a ribbon. If, during the evening, I thought I might like to see this person again, but needed another signal, I would look for the “right” moment—a sly glance, as a good laugh settled, as the gelato is set down—and present this small gift as a thank you for joining me, and read it aloud to him. (Can you imagine?) His response would determine the outcome. “How cute,” and a quick pushing it over next to the breadbasket, would bring down the curtain. A thank-you in return, or a lingering smile and, “Wait, let me read it to you,” would ring the curtains up! If he paused at, “What can anyone give you greater than now,” and perhaps looked up, then we were in for a long run. My William Stafford. Of course, I am always stopped, head shaking, at Stafford’s language: the searing questions, the choice and placement of the words. The “old wood hovers” … “the breathing respect” … “this new glimpse.” There’s a lot of white space, for me, after the last words have been whispered. Or shouted. I am brought to the now. The speaker is speaking directly to me, “when you turn around.” I turn around. Light falls on the slipper shells. I look out of the window at the weeping blossoms of the cherry tree. Look at the stacks and shelves of books, the staff of my life. Look at my calendar, my social engagement with the world. Look at the photograph of Stanley Kunitz in his garden. Look at the watercolor of the birdhouse on the old outhouse from last summer. Look at my notebooks, my saved lines, my savored words. Gaze at other poems mounted within sight: Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day,” Mekeel McBride’s “A Little Bit of Timely Advice.” I feel the soft blessing of my hair curling around my neck, back again after cancer’s cruel hex. “Lift this new glimpse.”

PASSING ON STORIES If we read the stories and poems above as though they are messages from trusted friends—for they are—and think of our own stories, we can remember what matters when we read and write our own poems and when we work with young poets in the classroom. What We Want to Remember About Poetry

• “The best poetry is indeed the song, the ode, of the human soul.” (Housden 2004, 122) • There are some feelings that only a poem can express. A poem is a place to find what is true. • Poems are not frills or luxuries. They can give us pleasure; they can help us survive. • There’s plenty of poetry for everyone. We can take what we want, what we need, and leave

the rest for others. • A poem exists, somewhere. Sometimes we happen upon it. But sometimes when we’re not looking and someone puts one in our path, it takes our hand for the journey. • People give the gift of poems to others because they know what gets to the heart of things. • People connect to poems at different times, in different ways, and for different reasons. • We understand what poems are, what they can do, by hearing them, by reading them, by having one touch our hearts. And, if we’re fortunate, by writing our own. • As poem makers, “Any true sound of our own will have an echo in other hearts.” (Housden 2004, 93)

A SHORT LIST FOR SHARING A LIFE IN POETRY Addonizio, Kim. 2009. Ordinary Genius. New York: W. W. Norton. Baker, Nicholson. 2009. The Anthologist. New York: Simon and Schuster. Braham, Jeanne. 2007. The Light Within the Light. Boston: David R. Godine. Cox, Sidney. 1957. A Swinger of Birches: A Portrait of Robert Frost. New York: New York University Press. Gillan, Maria Mazziotti. 2013. Writing Poetry to Save Your Life: How to Find the Courage to Tell Your Stories. Toronto: Guernica (Miroland). Housden, Roger. 2004. Ten Poems to Last a Lifetime. New York: Harmony Books. Keillor, Garrison, ed. 2005. Good Poems for Hard Times. New York: Penguin. Kumin, Maxine. 2000. Always Beginning: Essays on a Life in Poetry. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon. McEwen, Christian. 2011. World Enough and Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down. Peterborough, NH: Bauhan. McLane, Maureen N. 2012. My Poets. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. McNair, Wesley. 2003. Mapping the Heart: Reflections on Place and Poetry. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University Press. ——. 2012. The Words I Chose: A Memoir of Family and Poetry. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University Press. Moyers, Bill. 1999. Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft. New York: William Morrow. Oliver, Mary. 1995. Blue Pastures. New York: Harcourt Brace.

Orr, Gregory. 2002. Poetry as Survival. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Peacock, Molly. 1999. How to Read a Poem … and Start a Poetry Circle. Darby, PA: Diane Publishing. Rosen, Kim. 2009. Saved by a Poem. New York: Hay House. (Includes “Fifty Poems to Live by Heart,” page 230.) Schwartzman, Madeline. 2014. 365 Day Subway: Poems by New Yorkers. http://www.poemsbynewyorkers.com. Shapiro, Dani. 2013. Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life. New York: Grove Atlantic. Skinner, Jeffrey. 2012. The 6.5 Practices of Moderately Successful Poets: A Self-Help Memoir. Lousville, KY: Sarabande Books. Soto, Gary. 2013. What Poets Are Like: Up and Down with the Writing Life. Seattle, WA: Sasquatch Books. Stewart, Jimmy. 1981. “Jimmy Stewart Reads a Poem About His Dog Beau on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.” YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=mwGnCIdHQH0&feat ure=youtube_gdata_player. (A must-see.)

THE SOIL OF POETRY NO INSTRUCTION MANUAL CAN TEACH AS MUCH AS CAREFUL ATTENTION TO THE SOUNDS IN EVEN ONE GREAT POEM. —Robert Pinsky (1998, 7)

Before babies have speech they have motion. Have you ever been to a wedding and watched a child, who was still babbling baby talk, dance with all the right moves? Rhythm and sound may be the basis of poetry that children relate to most. It is here that the seeds of poetry may germinate. Some seeds will stagnate in sour soil or sprout with promise only to be attacked by the voracious education-mandate cutworm or left out to dry over decades of societal drought. But some, yes some, will go on to grow and flower in a profusion of pattern and color, spreading a steadfast system of poemroots to nurture their lives. An obvious start to an ideal solution would be to make sure children have a solid foundation of joy in poetry. We know this: That they clap and sing and dance and delight to the music of poems. That along the way they learn the names of poem makers and learn their words. That they admire and talk about people who would write such songs. That they learn to say some poems out loud, from memory, setting patterns in the brain and heart so that whatever comes they won’t forget. Minfong Ho writes in Maples in the Mist (1996) that during the Tang Dynasty (618–907 AD) China was experiencing mostly peace and prosperity. During that time the arts flourished. More than fifty thousand Tang poems by more than two thousand poets have been preserved. Most amazing to me, “Chinese children have always learned to read by reading poetry. As adults,” Ho writes, “they would be called upon to compose their own poems when they took the civil service examinations or to commemorate important events” (1996, Note from the Translator). Like Michelle in the preceding section, “Poems That Speak to Us,” Minfong chanted many of these poems as a child before she could read or write, as had her mother and grandparents and others for more than a thousand years. Now living in upstate New York, her children growing up in a different culture, she didn’t want to fail them by “breaking the link.” So she translated sixteen of the poems from Chinese to English for a picture book, hoping that another generation of children “will come to learn and love these poems, and eventually teach them to their own children as well, in one long unbroken chain” (Ho 1996, Note from the Translator). Today, we tell Minfong’s story and use her translations up through the grades.

GETTING ASSOCIATED WITH THE HEART

Several years ago, I watched Bill Moyers interview poet Robert Bly on PBS (2007). Bly recalled flying to Iran to stand at the grave of the fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafez, whose poems he has translated. He was charmed to see groups of children arriving at the tomb early in the morning singing Hafez’s poems. Bly wondered why we and our young people don’t visit the grave of, say, Walt Whitman. If we did, he thought, “then we would bring the poets into the heart instead of having them in our heads in graduate school” (Moyers 2007). Listening to Bly, reading some of Hafez for myself, I was inspired to write a poem called “Messengers.” MESSENGERS There is a country where children kneel at the graves of lost poets. In the morning they come to the tomb of Hafez and sing his poems back to him. Where are the winds of spring and dawn? Where is the beat of the sun? In this way, before the arc of mind ascends, they get associated with the heart— the pull and tear as the outside world stirs the linings of some inside sky. Breathing in messages, they outvoice his words to the world: So what toppled sweetness from the throne? So when did kindness die? In most cases we can’t literally visit the poets’ gravesites. But we can bring our young people to the poets and sing their poems. We can help them “get associated with the heart.”

BUILDING UP A FRIENDSHIP WITH POETRY: STRUCTURES AND RITUALS POETRY IS THE PUREST KIND OF READING. AND WHAT YOU DO … IS NOT ADVANCING: IT IS SPREADING; IT IS CIRCULATING. YOU CIRCULATE THROUGH LITERATURE … AND SO YOU GO, SPREADING, KEEPING UP A CIRCULATION. BUT IT MUST BE, MUST ALWAYS BE, PLEASURE. —Sidney Cox/Robert Frost (1957, 59)

Poems are short. A blessing for time-strapped teachers and students. It doesn’t take much time to read a poem and think about it. And that’s what our students who hope to live with poems, who hope to write poems, need to do.

HANGING POEMS IN THE AIR POEMS HANG OUT WHERE LIFE IS. —Susan G. Wooldridge (1996, 4) “Hanging poems in the air” suggests getting poems out into the airwaves, pinning them up against the light. Entering the world of poetry, we build up an acquaintance, and from there, we hope, a friendship. To give poems a chance to circulate, with pleasure, as Frost advised, it works best if the habit of poetry is embedded in our experiences from day to day, where we live. Students need opportunities to have these experiences: • Read some poems without an expectation to “do” anything. Just breathe them in and out. • Choose their own poems to explore and talk about with others. • Type or write out poems that “speak to them” in their notebooks, on their iPads. • Write out lines they like—for sound, as trigger for thought, for image, for memories they evoke. • Read poems more than once and revisit poems they’re attracted to for different reasons. • Read different types of poems, by different authors, to broaden the field and welcome challenges.

• Give voice by reading poems aloud, individually and in chorus with others. • Excuse themselves from the company of those who would beat a poem “with a hose to find out what it really means” (Collins 2001, 16).

SOME STRUCTURES AND RITUALS FOR KEEPING UP A CIRCULATION OF POETRY Knowing something of what students need, we’ll want to arrange things—especially in the busy life of a classroom—so that poetry becomes part of how we live there. Having certain structures and containers in place makes it easier to keep poetry consistent and accessible when we want it and need it. Once poetry is embedded in our thinking, in our work, we can be creative and bold. Here are some rituals that can be introduced to help students build up a friendship with poetry. Poem-a-Day

Plan to read a poem aloud often. Daily. It’s doable. Might take two minutes. Just hang it in the air. Go for variety so students can experience different styles, lengths, subjects; so they can learn to see images, hear sounds, and feel the effect of words and lines. Read at different times, for different reasons and purposes. “Give voice” to welcome the poetry muse for the day! If students like a poem, they can, oh joy, request to have a copy for their folders or to copy it into their notebooks or onto their iPads. Poems as Ritual

Give poems to others as gifts for occasions large and small, like we do in life outside school: a birthday; a welcome to our class; a bon voyage. To begin the day, to end the day. To lift someone’s spirits. To mark an achievement, and so on. (See Part 3, “The Occasional Poem.”) The gift of a poem is a most intimate and thoughtful gesture, as anyone who has received one will attest. Frequent Independent Reading Time

It’s easy to include poetry during independent reading. It doesn’t take up much time or space. Make poems available and show a passion for reading them. For extra delight, a chunk of time can be given over to—surprise—just kicking back and reading poems. If there’s other reading work to be done, a poem can be read first, or last. Students can end reading time by sharing a poem with a partner. Teachers can get into the personal habit of reading a poem-a-day for themselves. The Internet makes it easy: a poem-a-day can be delivered to you by e-mail from our major poetry organizations. (See resources at the end of this section.) All you have to do is read. You won’t like them all. But consistency of reading will stimulate the “circulation.” Copy poems you like

for your collection. Build a Collection

Poets without poems won’t work. So we need to build our own collection of poems across time. Collections grow out of and inspire interest. As collectors, we can feel ourselves becoming not just acquainted, but friendly, with poetry. Students can collect in personal or virtual folders. They should be encouraged to say why a poem is in the collection, how it speaks to them. They can revisit these poems, share in discussion with others, prepare a few to read aloud. If some of the poems were originally read together as a class, they become a shared history of reading done in the community. Then, conversation about them becomes more inclusive, more connected. Later on, students can select poems and create their own anthologies. To do this, they can look through published anthologies. Who puts them together? How are the poems chosen and organized in the book? A student who can refer to “my personal poetry collection” speaks of poems carefully chosen and carries a story of the collector. Writer’s Notebooks at Hand When Reading Poems

While building an acquaintance with poetry we will want more reading than writing about poems. But as we go, it will help to have students keep their notebooks handy, not for explaining or summarizing poems or deciding what the poet is “trying to say,” but for natural response and recording lines that intrigue them. They might write out and clip whole poems in their notebooks. What better way to understand how poems may be constructed? After all, they will be writing or typing the words just as the poet did. Poetry in Motion: Walking for Poems

As poets we want to develop a sensitivity, what Jane Hirshfield calls “a tenderness to all things” (1997, 211). Plan a walk outside. In different seasons. Take along your notebooks, your sketchbooks. Find things that might escape the “ordinary” eye. Walk in unusual places for the familiar, or in familiar places for surprise. Or walk the same course in different seasons. Jot details and snatches of what you notice, what you hear. (See “Poems for All Seasons” in Part 3 for a piece about Enrique’s class out walking for poems.) These observations, thoughts, become seedbeds for poems to come. Poetry Partners, Poetry Club

In many classes partnerships begin early: turn to your partner to talk, show your partner, tell your partner, make a plan with your partner. Poetry partners can meet to read and reread a poem, talk about a poem, prepare a poem for outvoicing or performance (see “Poetry MTWTF” in Part 1 and “The Music of It: Reading for Sound” in Part 2). Later students will want a partner to talk to when making their poems.

Poetry club might be as informal as students picking a poem, finding a time to meet, and having a talk. Or, like a book club, it could be a chance to have deeper conversation, to explore layers of thought, notice elements of craft, and so on. A Poetry Blog

Teachers can initiate a blog in which everyone meets in cyberspace around poems. (See “Young Poets Blogging” in Part 1, including a list of blogs for adults.) Request-a-Poem

There’s something hopeful and happy when we hear, “Let’s read ‘Dreams’ again.” Yes! Or “I would like to request … ‘Blackberry Eating.’” Yay! Time for request-a-poem builds enthusiasm for knowing and hearing poems. It gives students an opportunity to revisit them and make connections with some poems over others. There’s a body of shared poems, something familiar to choose from. Arrange a time (once a week, every two weeks) when students can all gather to ask for two or three favorite poems to be reread aloud again. Requests can be spontaneous or, less so, a few students could sign up ahead of time, and everyone gather with those poems. Present-a-Poem

Individual students can prepare to “give voice” to a favorite poem, to share it with the class. Or student pairs or groups can sign up to present a poem they’ve arranged chorally. Keeping it simple. It helps to have one, maybe two, presentations at a time so it’s not endless and there’s time to respond. If there’s ongoing opportunity to present, there’s no pressure for all to clamor at once. The class could talk to presenters about the presenter’s interpretation, what led to the choices the presenter made, the effect the reading had on them, the listeners. (See “The Music of It: Reading for Sound” in Part 2 and “Poetry MTWTF” in Part 1.) Poetry Slams

Slam festivals of every kind have grown in popularity all over the world since the 1980s. A poetry slam is a competition where poets read or recite original poems with great flare and vigor. They are held in various venues—local, statewide, national. At the National Poetry Slam, teams of poets compete for cash prizes. There are strict rules, time limits, and judging by the audience. Some folks dislike the competitive factor; others love the excitement and energy created at a slam. Some think teen slammers are involved with poetry in ways they would not have been otherwise. In a slam, the competitive part is not about the poem but the performance of the poem. However, for certain ages, we could call a poetry celebration a “slam” just to be “hip,” but leave out the competition. (See the resources listed at the end of this section for books on poetry slams.) Poetry Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday

Poetry MTWTF, sometimes called “Poetry Friday,” is a time when everyone gathers to read self-selected poems. There are many variations on how this can go. (See section “Poetry MTWTF” in Part 1 for an up-close look and references to other reading about this concept.) Skype in the Classroom

Social media is, of course, de rigueur. We can go to the Internet for all kinds of information about collaborating and connecting with others around poetry via Skype, or video conferencing. I would want to check out the kind of poetry they read and perform and how they work with students. Local poets, I believe, would like a chance to Skype with students. One told me: “Just ask!”

EXAMPLES OF ONLINE OPPORTUNITIES FOR SKYPING “I am passionate about poetry, and I love to help students experience wonderful poetry … and now I’m offering both in-person visits and virtual visits via Skype.” http://www.joannmacken.com/bio.htm. An urban teacher wants to host a poetry slam via Skype. She will be “teaching poetry through hip hop.” http://www.classroom20.com/forum/topics/skype-poetry-slam. Kate Messner connects you with authors who will Skype for free: http://www.katemessner.com/authors-who-skype-with-classes-book-clubs-for-free/. These two online articles promote opportunities to collaborate, communicate, and connect with people locally and around the world. They include ideas for teachers and parents, and resources for getting started: “50 Creative Ways to Use Skype in Your Classroom” (http://www.onlinedegrees.org/50-creative-ways-to-use-skype-in-your-classroom) and “50 Awesome Ways to Use Skype in the Classroom” (https://education.skype.com/resources/3450-awesome-ways-to-use-skype-in-the-classroom)

A FEW MORE CONNECTIONS FOR BUILDING UP A FRIENDSHIP WITH POETRY Attenborough, E., ed. 2001. Poetry by Heart: A Child’s Book of Poetry to Remember. New York: Scholastic. Atwell, Nancie. 2005. Naming the World: A Year of Poems and Lessons. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. (There is also a companion website for this book: http://www.namingtheworld.com/.) Glazner, Gary Mex, ed. 2000. Poetry Slam: The Competitive Art of Performance Poetry. San Francisco: Manic D Press. Janeczko, Paul, ed. 2009. A Foot in the Mouth: Poems to Speak, Sing, and Shout. Cambridge,

MA: Candlewick. Medina, Tony, and Louis Reyes Rivera, eds. 2001. Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam. New York: Three Rivers. Pinsky, Robert, and David Lehman, eds. 2013. The Best of the Best American Poetry. New York: Scribner Poetry. Rubin, Robert Alden. 1995. Poems Out Loud. New York: Algonquin Books. See also “A Short List for Sharing a Life in Poetry” at the end of “Poems That Speak to Us” in Part 1.

A FEW IMPORTANT WEBSITES FOR FUELING POETRY IN OUR LIVES Academy of American Poets. 2013. Poets.org. http://www.poets.org/. (Teacher discussion forum, audio and text materials, lesson plans, Poetry Read-a-Thon project, fine opportunities, events, information.) Aldredge, Michelle. 2013. Gwarlingo. http://www.gwarlingo.com. (Dedicated to advancing the arts, including poetry. “Sunday Poem,” which can be sent to your email address, features a poet each week, with photos, reviews, bio, poem samples, and an archive of past poets.) Annenberg Learner. 2013. “Voices and Visions.” http://www.learner.org/resources/series57.html. (Thirteen one-hour programs on thirteen American poets. Teaching materials.) Collins, Billy. 2013. Poetry 180. http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/. (Billy Collins’s poem-a-day project for high schoolers [and adults].) Keillor, Garrison. 2013. The Writer’s Almanac. http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/. (A poem a day for you. Poem talk.) Kooser, Ted. 2013. American Life in Poetry. http://www.americanlifeinpoetry.org/. (Ted Kooser’s poetry project around contemporary American poetry. Sign up for weekly emails.) Poetry Foundation. 2013. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/. (Poem-a-day, interviews, features, events, videos, audios, podcasts, information on Poetry Outloud national recitation contest.) Poets and Writers. 2013. http://www.pw.org/. (Feature articles, “daily news items, advice from writers, and our popular blog about writing contests.” Ways to connect.) Poets House. 2013. http://poetshouse.org/. (“A Place for Poetry—a national poetry library and literary center that invites poets and the public to step into the living tradition of poetry.” Seminars for teachers. A treasure. If in New York, visit.) Poets Online. 2013. http://www.poetsonline.org/. (A site of inspiration. Offers opportunity to write a poem to a monthly prompt. Great fun!)

Schwartzman, Madeline. 2014. 365 Day Subway: Poems by New Yorkers. http://www.poemsbynewyorkers.com. (Poems Schwartzman has invited New York City subway riders to write in her notebook.) Teachers and Writers Collaborative. 2013. http://www.twc.org/. (“Educating the imagination of students, teachers, and writers.”) Your Daily Poem. 2013. http://www.yourdailypoem.com. (A poem a day in your mailbox, including biographical information about the poet.)

POETRY MTWTF (AKA POETRY FRIDAY) Poetry Friday is not a new concept, and there are many variations on the theme. I’ve chosen to rename it because I wonder why every day can’t be a day with poetry in it. However, early last year my friends Jay and Chris decided to try out the concept in their individual fifth-grade classrooms, to see how it fit with their ongoing poetry work. They designated twenty minutes on Friday afternoons (surprise), when students would read self-selected poems aloud at the music stand. To begin they kept this time informal, fast and conversational, with stops and starts. Then it became mandatory, half the class reading one week, half the next so each student would get comfortable stepping up, putting words in the air. Over time, without fail, students began to read more original work, voicing opinions, observations, feelings. Gradually, as students read more original poems, they talked more about the poet’s tools, a little at a time, knowing there was always tomorrow during writer’s workshop to dig a little deeper. When I visited one day, Chris set up the microphone. This isn’t necessary but it’s reassuring, especially early on, to be able to focus on one’s reading of the poem and not worry about projecting. He decided to keep the mic available all year. When students say, “I wrote this last night and I …,” Chris says, “Go on up. Take the mic.” The words Jay and Chris use are respectful of young poets’ risks and attempts. “Thank you, Alex, for reading today. I know that poem is close to your heart”; “Marla, this is the first time you’ve read for us, so thank you very very much”; “I have to preface this—Jack has a draft and isn’t sure he wanted to read, but he will. And we’ll realize it’s a draft. Perhaps he’ll learn as he reads it to us.” Gradually, Poetry Friday became an opportunity for students to read poems that carried over from their everyday work. For example, Chris had read Emily Dickinson’s “A word is dead” (1924a) previously in class. A word is dead When it is said, Some say. I say it just Begins to live That day. —EMILY DICKINSON (1894, 269) Students had responded in their notebooks and had conversations about the poem. On Poetry Friday, Chris recites “A word is dead” to emphasize the pleasure, the importance, of reading

poems again and again. Then he says what he always says when a student protests that someone has just read the poem he was going to read: “It’s okay. You can’t use up a poem.” On another Friday, Jay explains to me that in social studies his class has been looking at early French Lascaux cave paintings. He had put a large image of a cave painting on the interactive whiteboard. Students made observations in their notebooks, discussed what they noticed, what that made them think and wonder about. Why might these “ancients” have painted what they did? Was it a tally? A wish? Maybe a prayer for food? Even though the students didn’t see hunters, they imagined them, human beings, expressing what was important in their daily lives on the cave walls. Drafting their poems, students considered who the speaker might be (a storyteller, one of the characters in the paintings, an outside observer, the painter) and what writing stance he or she would take (musing on what is happening, addressing an object, addressing another character, recreating images). Some students wrote from a hunter’s perspective and others from an animal’s perspective (see “Putting on the Mask: Persona Poems” in Part 3). On this poetry Friday, Luke and Alex read the crafted poems that resulted from their social studies work. STORY OF SURVIVAL I came to the village with father. The depressed look on people’s faces sickened me. There was no food for miles, we failed again. That night father left I tried to wake mama; she was like a bear in hibernation. Next morning I woke to birds, buffalo, deer and cattle, but no father. Did he sacrifice his life to bring us food? Then he came to me,

Father, I screamed. He showed me how he painted the animals, brown and black, the curve of the horn, dip of the back, the dust from the hooves, all the animals for us. Then I understood. —LUKE ON A CAVE WALL You see animals and me stalking them but you won’t see the kill, and this image, frozen in time, won’t reveal us giving thanks To that something, that spirit out there, unknown like the power of a rabbit’s leg. Under this unknown we thrive because of the life power we take from the animals. I wish I could give life back. What is better, our good or theirs? The struggle of survival.

—ALEX

As Poetry Friday continued for Chris and Jay, students surprised them with their fearlessness, humor, and willingness to show sides of themselves not seen before. Sometimes a student who struggled in other academic areas would command the floor and win admiration from all. “It’s usually one of the best events of the week,” says Jay. “It doesn’t take long and students do not tire of it.”

FOR ANOTHER VARIATION ON POETRY FRIDAY Williams, Ann. 2013. “Poetry All Year Long.” Choice Literacy. http://www.choiceliteracy.com/articles-detail-view.php?id=1412. (Ann writes about how Poetry Friday supports her work with poet studies, collaboration with a poet-in-residence, performing poetry, and end of the year Poetry Celebration.)

YOUNG POETS BLOGGING WHEN TECHNOLOGY PUTS US AT A DISTANCE, I’M NOT INTERESTED. BUT WHEN TECHNOLOGY BRINGS US TOGETHER TO TALK ABOUT THINGS THAT MATTER TO US, COUNT ME IN. —Chris Kostenko, teacher, grade 5

Poetry blogs are where people keep company with like-minded folks. Where we find what poet Ezra Pound called “news that stays news” (1960). Creating a poetry blog, then, is another way to invite students further into a world of poetry—a combination of modern technology they like to use and a form of expression we hope they will explore and feel comfortable with. But learning to blog in thoughtful and respectful ways doesn’t just happen. And blogging about poetry, in my opinion, arises out of a carefully laid seedbed of talk and response that is nurtured early on in the classroom. Let’s take a look at how Chris (whom we met in “Poetry MTWTF”) initiates and maintains a classroom poetry blog.

SWEETENING THE SOIL FOR POETRY In Chris’s class the blog doesn’t come first. He feels that students need to hear poetry, to respond, to learn to have conversation. That’s what the blog is all about. Chris reads poems to and with the class consistently. They expect to read poetry, to react and talk with others. He gives them copies so they can revisit these poems and watch their folders fatten. They begin to feel at home with poetry and poets. He puts out his folders of poems that have been photocopied over the years, poems he likes and feels are provocative, poems students have responded to in the past, poems the current class is reading. Chris highlights baskets or bins of different types of poetry books, including novels written in verse (Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse [1997], Something About America by Maria Testa [2007], Been to Yesterdays, a memoir written in verse by Lee Bennett Hopkins [1995]); multiple volumes by the same author (e.g., Langston Hughes, Cynthia Rylant); anthologies such as Salting the Ocean by Naomi Shihab Nye (2000) and The Place My Words Are Looking For by Paul Janeczko (1990).

INTRODUCING THE IDEA OF BLOGGING EARLY ON Chris creates what he calls a “Reading/Writing Blog” early in the school year. Here is his first invitation to students on the blog. It sets the tone. He is inclusive, warm, passionate, as he is in the classroom, and demonstrates high expectations. He holds students accountable in a

respectful way. Welcome! I am excited about this new place we have in cyberspace. Our own space. An important place. This place will become a library of our thinking. Be thoughtful. Do slow thinking—and then write. Do you remember passing around a ball of blue yarn on one of the first days? We created a web as we passed that ball and shared something about ourselves. Do you remember when I pulled on the web? We all felt the tug. I want you to think about this blog in the same way. We are making connections, so be honest, be thoughtful, and be positive to your peers. Every connection we make in this place will help to build our beautiful web. Always remember, when anyone posts and pulls our web, we’ll all feel the tug. Bottom line: Be honest. Be thoughtful. Be considerate. I look forward to building a complex web of smart thinking and good writing. Mandatory Post: I want to be sure we’re on the same virtual page. Send a comment that lets me know you agree to use our space responsibly. Thanks, Mr. K.

EARLY POETRY BLOG POSTS To set expectations at first, Chris demonstrates how he chooses a few poems and writes a blurb telling why he has chosen that poem, what stands out to him, and what that connection makes him think. Students read his posts and respond, as they will soon do with their peers. They may agree with Chris or take a different tack, expanding, finding different angles. They read each other’s responses and talk back. Keeping it simple. Chris makes some response opportunities optional and some mandatory. He doesn’t call this “homework.” This is work done “outside the school day.” (Cheeky fellow!) In an early post, Chris shares the poem “Wars” from Jean Little’s Hey, World, Here I Am (1986), with the simple question: “So what do you think about this poem?” In the poem the author remembers when she was in second grade telling her father adamantly that she thought

all wars were wrong! Then she remembers she caught her sister playing with her paper dolls without asking, and they had what she calls a “war.” Here are two responses.

Daniel:

People have to know how to compromise. For example, if two people on the same team think that a play should be played differently, they have to compromise in order for the team to win. People have to discuss things more often to find the best solution.

Leonard:

Some people just want ongoing war. I agree with Gabby and Claudia because the character did not really understand the meaning of war, and how horrible it can be. But I think he could understand what war is, if he knew. Sometimes kids have a soul to understand the things happening around the world.

CREATING OPPORTUNITIES TO PAUSE AND CONSIDER Chris creates a category in the blog called “Poems That Make You Stop and Think.” He posts, for example, Tom Hennen’s prose poem “The Life of a Day,” which he found in Garrison Keillor’s anthology Good Poems (2003). Like people or dogs, each day is unique and has its own personality quirks which can be seen easily if you look closely. But there are so few days compared to people, not to mention dogs, that it would be surprising if a day were not a hundred times more interesting than most people. But usually they just pass, mostly unnoticed, unless they are wildly nice, like autumn ones full of red maple trees and hazy sunlight, or if they are grimly awful ones in a winter blizzard that kills the lost traveler and bunches of cattle. For some reason we like to see days pass, even though most of us claim we don’t want to reach our last one for a long time. We examine each day before us with barely a glance and say, no, this isn’t the one I have been looking for, and wait in a bored sort of way for the next, when, we are convinced, our lives will start for real. Meanwhile this day is going by perfectly well adjusted, as some days are, with the right amounts ofsunlight and shade, and a light breeze scented with a perfume made from the mixture of fallen apples, corn stubble, dry oak leaves, and the faint odor of last night’s meandering skunk. —TOM HENNEN (IN KEILLOR 2003, 32) The poet takes a stance using wonderful details. Kind of philosophizing. Students may consider the days of their lives; they may come along with Hennen, or find some disagreement, or have a theory of their own. What happens in the classroom becomes fodder for the poetry blog. What happens on the

blog becomes fodder for the poetry mill back in the classroom as the reciprocity creates energy over time. In another example, the class is reading Maria Testa’s (2007) Something About America, written in verse. Chris writes on the blog, “Let’s try to write our thoughts in verse …”

STUDENTS PREPARE TO POST POEMS Eventually, Chris wants to turn the selecting/posting process over to the students. They have the idea. But he wants to make sure they understand the process. He demonstrates to the class how he might choose a poem to share with others. He reminds them of the “vast jungle of poems in the classroom they can wade through in order to choose.” And their individual collections. He says to choose a poem that “speaks to you” and to “write a very short piece in your notebook to explain why and in what ways. You might refer to some lines that resonate.” Then he meets with a group of four students a day to talk about the poems they want to post. Each student reads aloud the poem and explains his or her choice. One boy chooses, for example, “Valentine for Ernest Mann” by Naomi Shihab Nye. He likes the voice of the poem. “This author has attitude. She is surprising and strong about her feelings.” Group members have an opportunity to respond to each of their peers. Sometimes, as a result of this meeting, writers want to revise their short notebook pieces before posting them. Chris repeats this process with each group of four students.

POSTING, RESPONDING, PLOWING BACK Now each student feels confident. Each has something carefully chosen to share, and the first post is carefully thought out. Getting this right will serve everyone from here on out. Chris posts a few students’ chosen poems and short pieces as they are ready. He includes the poem title, poem’s author, and sometimes the book the poem’s from. He introduces the students’ comments simply by saying something like, “Dan chose this poem. Here’s what he thinks.” At the end of each entry he asks the rest of the class to comment: “What do you think?” The poem appears in blue, the reader’s notes appear in red, and Chris’s note to nudge them to write appears in green (GO). Chris requires students to respond to two poems that have been posted so far. “Of course,” he says, “you can respond to more (ahem). Reading and responding on the blog is part of the work we do.” Often, after Chris reads student poems and comments on the blog, he brings some back into the classroom for more attention and deeper conversation. These conversations are lively, because all students have already read and reacted to the post. And they have more to say. They’re not trying to pull water from a dry well. What has been written is plowed back to enrich the soil of classroom work. And, most important, students see the work they’ve done on the blog becoming even more valued back on the home front. It’s not lost in cyberspace.

SAMPLE STUDENT POSTS AND INTERACTIONS DAN “THERE” FROM BEEN TO YESTERDAYS BY LEE BENNETT HOPKINS THERE are things you feel inside— things you cannot always hide— things you wish you never knew— things you pray just won’t come true. I know that something’s going on. I don’t know what it is or why but

this morning in the kitchen when I saw Mama cry all day long her hurt went my mind— a kind of pain I could not leave behind. Something wrong is happening. An aching burning something-thing. I don’t know what it is or why— it won’t leave me alone no matter how I try. Chris’s comment to the class: “Here’s what Daniel had to say about the poem he chose.”

This poem caught my eye because it has a lot of emotion to it. It is very hard for me to read because my parents are divorced, but it really brings me back to that moment in time. This poem gives me a sad emotion. I like how this poem doesn’t write what is happening; it describes it very nicely. It never says “my parents are divorcing.” I had to actually figure that out by reading the clues in the poem. I notice that there is one sentence or less in one stanza, and about one to two words on a line. Each stanza really describes the feelings of the character. Chris’s question to readers: “What do you think about the poem Daniel chose? Give him some feedback.” Here are three students’ responses to Daniel’s blog post:

Alex:

I can feel all the emotion in this poem. Even though my parents aren’t divorced, I can feel the way this girl or boy feels because of the way Lee Bennett Hopkins describes it.



At first, I didn’t know that she or he was talking about divorce, but once I read it over a few times, I figured it out.



I also like this poem because it doesn’t give the obvious right away. If I felt like how this girl/boy felt or even Dan, I would be sad and I would never leave it alone either, but I would go back to the happy moments.

Claudia:

I think Dan picked a good poem because he knows how this girl/boy feels and he can relate to it. It’s good also because of all the emotion which really makes the poem strong.

Christiana:

I agree with you because when I read the poem I got really sad even though my parents aren’t divorced. I like how the author did that because it touches everyone in their own way. It touched me because its was hard for an adult to cry and I felt so bad for the kid in the poem. I wanted to help the kid so bad. That shows a good poem.

MORE BLOG CONNECTIONS Bedard, Carol, and Charles Fuhrken. 2013. When Writing with Technology Matters. Portland, ME: Stenhouse. (Grade range 1–8.)

POETRY BLOGS FOR OLDER STUDENTS AND ADULTS

Aldredge, Michelle. 2013. Gwarlingo. http://www.gwarlingo.com. (Dedicated to advancing the arts, including poetry. “Sunday Poem,” which can be sent to your e-mail address, features a poet each week, with photos, reviews, bio, poem samples, and an archive of past poets.) Blog Rank. 2013. “Top 50 Poetry Blogs.” http://www.invesp.com/blog-rank/Poetry. (A list of the top 50 poetry blogs.) NewPages. 2013. “Blogs by Poets and Writers.” http://www.newpages.com/blogs/writersblogs.htm. (Links to blogs in abc order; hundreds to choose from.) Poetry Foundation. 2013. “Harriet.” http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/. (Blog for poetry and related news.)

PART 2

READING A POEM: AN IMMENSE INTIMACY HOW TO READ A POEM: BEGINNER’S MANUAL First, forget everything you have learned, that poetry is difficult, that it cannot be appreciated by the likes of you, with your high school equivalency diploma, your steel-tipped boots, or your white-collar misunderstandings. Do not assume meanings hidden from you: the best poems mean what they say and say it. To read poetry requires only courage enough to leap from the edge and trust. Treat a poem like dirt, humus rich and heavy from the garden. Later it will become the fat tomatoes and golden squash piled high upon your kitchen table. Poetry demands surrender, language saying what is true, doing holy things to the ordinary. Readjust one poem a day. Someday a book of poems may open in your hands like a daffodil offering its cup to the sun. When you can name five poets without including Bob Dylan, when you exceed your quota and don’t even notice,

close this manual. Congratulations, You can now read poetry. —PAMELA SPIRO WAGNER (2009, IX) A poem is a work of art. A made thing. The poem’s voice speaks to someone who is willing to listen. “Poems communicate before they are understood” (Hirsch 1999, 31). Poet-poem, and listener-reader—separated through time and history, by walls and boundaries—connect and develop the beginnings of a relationship through the medium of words. The deeper the relationship between the poem and the reader, the deeper the reader connects with some inner verbal music. Words vibrate like an Aeolian harp to the energy of the wind. The reader meets the poem, and through this exchange, something new is created, an “immense intimacy” (Hirsch 1999, 8). This is the mystery and the miracle.

A FEW RESOURCES FOR THE LISTENER-READER Academy of American Poets. 2013. “How to Read a Poem.” Poets.org. http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/280. Hirsch, Edward. 1999. How to Read a Poem. San Diego, CA: Harcourt. Hirshfield, Jane. 1997. Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry. New York: HarperCollins. Peacock, Molly. 1999. How to Read a Poem … and Start a Poetry Circle. Darby, PA: Diane Publishing. Pinsky, Robert. 1998. The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. Rosen, Kim. 2009. Saved by a Poem. New York: Hay House.

YOU PROBABLY WOULDN’T TRY TO FIGURE OUT THE EXACT MEANING OF BEETHOVEN’S NINTH SYMPHONY OR ELLA FITZGERALD’S SCAT SINGING … YOU FEEL THESE ART FORMS … YOU LET YOUR LINEAR MIND RELAX AND GO FOR THE RIDE. —Kim Rosen (2009, xvi) I still have a copy of Julianne’s piece of writing from fourth grade called “Magic.” In it she describes what it’s like to read Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling 2001). She sits on the couch, rubs her fingers over the cover, longing. She takes her time opening the

book, turning the title page. She reads the first word, the twentieth, the fiftieth. “Finally, on the one hundredth word, FLASH! I am on the broomstick. Flying. Soaring. Suddenly, my arm stretches out. I see a gold ball with white wings flapping. My fingers close around it. I can hear the crowd cheering.” She becomes Harry as he flies. When she (Harry) lands, bunches of people run toward her. She notices a boy and girl ahead of everyone else. “They yell, ‘You did it Harry! Great job!’ Without even trying, a word escapes from my lips as I turn the page. ‘Thanks,’ I say.” Many of us have experienced the power of fiction, memoir, and other nonfiction, to draw us into a unique world, a different reality, to render us transfixed. This gives us great pleasure. But what happens to us when we read poetry? What power does the poem have to lure us in? Where does the poem take us? When we read a poem, obviously we aren’t affected by aspects of it in list form. And certainly not in any prescribed order. It is an overlapping and integrated process, signals from all we’ve experienced and read before sparking in recognition. Also, we may welcome poems and poets in different ways and at different times in our lives. But for the purpose of considering how we might make our way into a poem, how it can affect us, I’ll isolate some ways in order to talk more specifically about them: • The Shape of It • Titles Leading Us into a Poem • The Music of It: Reading for Sound • Connecting with a Poem • Dealing with Difficulty • Poem Talk • Who Is the Speaker in a Poem?

THE SHAPE OF IT Most people, no matter what age, can recognize a poem on the page. It doesn’t look like other types of writing. It has a shape consisting of lines, stanzas, and spaces that guide us through the reading of it. Words do not stretch all the way from one edge of the page to another, as in prose (unless it’s a prose poem), but stop at a place where the poet decides the line needs to end. In earlier times strict metric rules dictated the length of the lines and their rhythm. In free verse written mostly today (although many poets enjoy writing in strict forms as well), the poet is the sculptor. As a reader, the very look of a poem on the page signals possible pleasure ahead for me. Some obvious features catch my scanning eye before I even begin. The title is a door opening, inviting me inside. I anticipate browsing through the “room” of each stanza. I take comfort when sometimes each stanza has the same number of lines—two (couplet), three (tercet), four (quatrain). An epigraph—a quote underneath the title—like the one from Ralph Waldo Emerson that opens Geoffrey Nutter’s (2013) poetry collection The Rose of January is irresistible: LETTUCE, APPLE, OR MELON, IN SEASON—SO LONG AS IT IS GOOD … WHEN THEIR HOUR IS PAST DO NOT TRY TO MOVE THE HAND BACK ON THE DIAL & DO THEM AGAIN BUT TRY THAT UNDONE SOMETHING WHICH IS IN SEASON NOW, CELERY, ICE, OR CUCUMBERS. I already feel mesmerized when I see the “whens” that start most lines in Maxine Kumin’s pantoum, “What You Do” (2007, 39). And when I see the phrase “what you do” repeated down the page, I know it will have the sound of a chant. I like a chanting tone. I am lured by lines. Just the look of them. The mystery of Galway Kinnell’s (2001) “Prayer”—three lines with the word “is” written three times in a row. A longish poem by Jeanne Marie Beaumont (2004) is a slim column of very short questions, each one ending in a question mark. The title of the poem, “Afraid So,” seems to be the answer to every question. In Nick Flynn’s “Sudden,” I spot words in italics, holding an ominous message ’til I can get to them: “massive, suddenly, something awful” (2000, 18). Yes, I look forward to “reading” the messages the poet gives me, through the contours and features of the poem, even before the content.

A FIRST LOOK AT A POEM WITH RAY … ITS SHAPE WILL NOT ONLY INFLUENCE OUR READING OF IT, BUT IT WILL HOLD US IN ITS EMBRACE AS WE READ, GUIDING OUR PASSAGE OVER ITS SPECIAL TERRAIN.

—Billy Collins (in Citino 2002, 10)

“The Yawn,” by Paul Blackburn, held me in its embrace from the first time I cast my eyes over it. That small moment etched in words, choreographed so beautifully for the voice. I sit down with Ray to see how he might approach the poem. He scans it, the way one might do the cover of a book. THE YAWN The black-haired girl with the big brown eyes on the Queens train coming in to work, so opens her mouth so beautifully wide in a ya-aawn, that two stops after she has left the train I have only to think of her and I o-oh-aaaww-hm wow! —PAUL BLACKBURN (1985, 104) Ray smiles and shakes his head. “Man, those words are all over the place.” Indeed. I say that as a reader, I do the same thing. I like to glance over the poem and have a meditative moment before reading. I like to pick up the messages the poem sends even before I begin. I ask Ray what else he notices, just looking. He says some words are pushed to the side, almost out of the poem. It has a “zig-zaggy” look. A lot of words all by themselves. In the middle, at the end of a line. He sees the word “yawn,” which is the title, but it’s stretched out. There’s a strange word at the end. He’s never seen a poem end in “wow.” And the exclamation point is in the “wrong” place. I ask Ray to read the poem silently to himself. I take a cue from Mary Oliver, who once suggested that instead of asking what the poem is about we should ask, “How does it make you feel?” I ask Ray how the poem makes him feel. “I feel shaky. Like I’m on this train.” He also thinks he might be “shaky” if he saw a pretty girl like that. (Ahem.) What might have made him feel shaky just looking at the poem? “My eyes had to go back and forth, up and down.” He gives me a couple examples: “big / brown / eyes / on the” and “beautifully / wide / in a …” I say that seems exciting to me. I’m eager to hear the poem. I ask whether he would like me to read it aloud or whether he would read it to me. He reads.

Possibly to give a good showing, Ray reads the poem through quickly—with a few stops and stumbles—like a sentence, paying almost no attention to the way it is shaped. He’s not sure how to read the next to the last line. He glosses over it. But gives lots of energy to “wow !” I thank him for his reading. “The Yawn.” I remind Ray that the title of a poem invites us in, like a door opening for us to enter. I ask Ray to close his eyes and put himself on that subway train, like the ones he rides every day. It’s early morning. He’s sitting on the train. How’s he feeling this morning? (Trying to wake up.) What’s it like on the train? (Train’s shaking, rattling, people schmushed in, hanging on.) Look around, what catches his attention? (Pretty girl with black hair, big brown eyes, holding onto the strap, yawning a big yawn, she’s sleepy too.) What does he think about that? (Likes looking at her, still thinking about her, wakes him up.) Terrific. We talk about why Paul Blackburn might have shaped his poem with these line breaks and spaces. That poets arrange the words, the lines, to help us experience the poem the way they want us to. And to have a little fun. This is a train ride. So we will read it again, this time paying attention to all the signals Blackburn gives us. We can read it together, slowing it down, obeying the pauses, delays, the yawns, but being natural, not overly dramatic. It’s a small moment, not Shakespeare. Okay. Let’s get on that train. It’s fun to read. And fun to write. Even though Ray has the copy, I wonder if he would like to write it out in his notebook. I paraphrase for him what Billy Collins (2002) suggests. That writing or typing out a poem helps you know it more closely; that when you write it out you are doing exactly what the poet did, what you can do any time you want to. And here’s a treat. Go to this web page to hear Blackburn read “The Yawn”: http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Blackburn/SUNYCortland%201971/Blackburn-Paul_15_The-Yawn_SUNY-Cortland_4-1-71.mp3.

SHARING ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON SHAPE Baker, David, and Ann Townsend. 2002. “The Line/The Form/The Music.” In The Eye of the Poet: Six Views of the Art and Craft of Poetry, ed. David Citino. New York: Oxford University Press. Behn, Robin, and Chase Twichell, eds. 1992. The Practice of Poetry. New York: HarperCollins. Collins, Billy. 2002. “Poetry, Pleasure, and the Hedonist Reader.” In The Eye of the Poet: Six Views of the Art and Craft of Poetry, ed. David Citino. New York: Oxford University Press. Longenbach, James. 2008. The Art of the Poetic Line. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf. Oliver, Mary. 1994. A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry. New York: Harcourt Brace. Strand, Mark, and Eavan Boland. 2000. The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic

Forms. New York: W. W. Norton.

TITLES LEADING US INTO A POEM TITLES ARE VERY IMPORTANT TOOLS FOR DELIVERING INFORMATION AND SETTING EXPECTATIONS. —Ted Kooser (2005, 27)

I’ve sometimes been disconcerted at a museum when I’m enjoying a painting, sneak up to the little label next to it, and squint, only to see “Untitled.” I wonder why the artist wouldn’t want to name his or her work. Or perhaps there was no one way to think about the painting. To name it might keep viewers from forming their own ideas. Emily Dickinson notwithstanding—most of her gems having no titles—let’s consider a few titles and the work they do in a poem. Take a look at May Swenson’s (1993) poem “How Everything Happens (Based on a study of the Wave)” at this online site: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/media/65064. At first glance, it seems to begin with the word “happen” and continue—one word per line, moving right to left—with “to / up / stacking.” Reading backward? This makes no sense, we think. Luckily, Swenson thought to greet readers with a title that clarifies what’s going on. Her title gives us essential background information. Swenson had indeed studied the science of waves. She chose and placed words on the page not only to help us feel the intricacy of the way waves move—the back and forth, the pull and break—but also to suggest that this movement represents how things work in the world. If Swenson had lifted some words from the poem for the title, called it, say, “Stacking Up,” or even used “How Everything Happens” without the parenthetical, I would have been lost in the undertow, for a while at least. (See “Dances with Words” in Part 3 for more about this poem. And see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QPRw1_JbmM for a student’s visual project using this poem.) Like Swenson, Lisel Mueller gives us background information that helps us move right into her poem. In “Losing My Sight,” the speaker’s world of dimming vision becomes a world of sound. “I never knew that by August / the birds are practically silent / only a twitter here and there …” (1996, 10). (Mueller won the Pulitzer Prize for the book in which this poem appears, Alive Together.) Another way writers entice us is to put details in the title that might not fit in the rest of the poem. Wallace Stevens (1990) titled his poem “A Dish of Peaches in Russia.” Just “Peaches” might have us slip on by without a clue. The added details “a dish” and “in Russia” allows the poet to focus on the unique experience, not having to explain background. A poem’s title, like a first date, wants to make an impression. Edward Hirsch’s “For the Sleepwalkers,” for example, piques my curiosity about people I’m not used to reading about. He decides to write it “For” this group of people, as an ode, so I’m thinking he will find

fascinating ways to pay tribute to them: “Tonight I want to say something wonderful / for the sleepwalkers who have so much faith / in their legs …” (1981, 34). Some poem titles serve as the first word or line of the poem. In Lee Bennett Hopkins’s (1995) coming-of-age memoir in poem form, every poem’s title is the first word of the poem, written in bold capital letters: “THERE / are / things / you feel / inside—” (19). This suits entirely, because it’s a collection of interconnected images of family life from childhood to the edge of adolescence. (See “Young Poets Blogging” in Part 1 for more about the poem “THERE.”) Marguerite Mack’s poem begins with the title and flows right into the first line: “If you don’t come [title] / The sun will get / smaller and smaller / and the grass won’t green…” (1989, 60). Sometimes a title contains the form of the poem. Pablo Neruda’s “Ode to My Socks,” for example. Just saying the form as a title—“An Ode”—might be boring and not very poem specific. In that case I would agree with Ted Kooser (2005), who writes that he sees no advantage to naming the form in the title. That it might make readers “draw back” to think about form instead of just enjoying the poem. In my case, I wrote a poem called “Same Old Love Song: A Cento” (McPhillips 2013). All the lines were lifted from country-western songs. So that readers would understand the whimsy, the playfulness, of trying to fit together these lines to make some kind of silly sense, I put the form in the title. I hope readers might enjoy the poem, might like knowing it’s a cento. And if they can’t discern what a cento is from reading it, then perhaps they will look it up, and find more, or write one. (See “Poems Waiting to Be Found” in Part 3 for more about the cento.) Some titles locate the poem. James Wright’s (1990) “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota” is quite specific. It combines the location and the overarching image. Now the body of the poem doesn’t have to give us this information; it can do its focused work. After the title, we can enter the poem, read the details of what the speaker sees overhead, what he hears in the distance, what he thinks in the final analysis. Then we can wonder forever about that last line! Some titles are short. But even one-word titles do various kinds of work. Valerie Worth (1994) is known for one-word titles, nouns that name the subject of the poem: “asparagus,” “chairs.” No mystery there. But Nick Flynn’s (2000) title “Sudden” is an emotional time bomb. Some titles are long. Wordsworth’s (1998) “Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” runs in just under James Wright’s. Maxine Kumin’s (2001) “John Green Takes His Warner, New Hampshire, Neighbor to a Red Sox Game” takes the cake. Both short and long titles can be provocative and irresistible. So we see that the title is a gateway into a poem, part of what draws us to a poem, what invites us in, what helps us navigate its waters. No title? We’re on our own. (See specifics about writing titles in the Part 3 sections “Line by Line” and “Poets Facing Art: Ekphrastic Poems,” and throughout the book in discussions about craft.)

MORE TITLE TALK

Doty, Mark. 2010. The Art of Description: World into Word. Minneapolis, MN: Gray Wolf. Habash, Gabe. 2012. “12 Famous Book Titles That Come from Poetry.” PWxyz. The news blog of Publishers Weekly. http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/PWxyz/2012/02/29/12famous-book-titles-that-come-from-poetry/. (A twist, for fun.)) Kooser, Ted. 2005. The Poetry Home Repair Manual. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. McNair, Wesley. 2003. Mapping the Heart: Reflections on Place and Poetry. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University Press. Mulvihill, John. 2013. “Why Dickinson Didn’t Title.” Modern American Poetry. http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/dickinson/mulvihill.htm. Simmonds, Kathryn. 2013. “Working Titles.” Magma Poetry Online. http://magmapoetry.com/archive/magma-51/articles/working-titles/. Wiggerman, Scott, and David Meischen, eds. 2011. Wingbeats: Exercises and Practice in Poetry. Austin, TX: Dos Gatos Press.

THE MUSIC OF IT: READING FOR SOUND IT’S WHAT YOU HEAR THAT MAKES YOUR HEART THUMP OR MAKES YOU FEEL A LITTLE GIDDY AND OUT OF BREATH. —Scott Elledge (1990, xviii)

The poet invites us in and the poem performs. It moves and sings across time to the tunes and rhythms of its day. The iambic pentameter of Shakespeare, with its strict meter and predictable end rhymes. The loose thought-streams of Whitman. The unpunctuated jots of E. E. Cummings. The syncopated lines of Gwendolyn Brooks. As we read a good poem we tune ourselves to its music. In college, years ago, a young man impressed me with a personal recitation of “Spring and Fall” by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1998). I think I impressed him too by bursting not into applause but into tears. Here’s the poem. Read it aloud without trying to “figure it out.” Just hear it. SPRING AND FALL to a young child Márgarét, are you grieving Over Goldengrove unleaving? Leaves, like the things of man, you With your fresh thoughts care for, can you? Ah! ás the heart grows older It will come to such sights colder By and by, nor spare a sigh Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; And yet you will weep and know why. Now no matter, child, the name: Sorrow’s springs áre the same. Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed: It is the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for.

—GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS (1998, 203) Hearing this poem for the first time, I felt connected to some sad message that my heart seemed to recognize before my mind could grasp it. The spell was cast. I know now that the interaction of certain elements within a poem creates a rhythm and sound that rolls the language along and me with it. The alliterative “worlds of wanwood, leafmeal lie.” The over and overness of consonants near each other (consonance)—“worlds,” “wan,” “will,” “weep,” “why”; “ghost guessed.” The repetition of vowel sounds (assonance) in “over Goldengrove”; “leaves like the things”; “born for, mourn for.” Sounds. Some words in “Spring and Fall” triggered emotion disconnected from an actual image or event I could remember. Rhythm and sound weaving words together, carrying messages to my heart.

READING ALOUD FOR SOUND LEARNING TO HEAR LANGUAGE IN A MORE CONSCIOUS WAY CAN ENHANCE OUR PLEASURE IN LINES AND POEMS … NO INSTRUCTION MANUAL CAN TEACH AS MUCH AS CAREFUL ATTENTION TO THE SOUNDS IN EVEN ONE GREAT POEM. —Robert Pinsky (1998, 7) Many of my own poems begin with a word or line I like the sound of and have copied in my notebook. It moves from there, sounds evoking experience, images, feelings. One way to tune the ear to the sounds of a poem is, of course, to hear it read. Go to the Internet to hear William Butler Yeats reading “The Lake Isle of In-nisfree,” recorded in 1932: http://www.openculture.com/2012/06/rare_1930s_audio_wb_yeats_reads_four_of_his_poems.html. Yeats, in his charming lilt, also describes how he came to write the poem. Enchantment carried on the winds of sound. Longenbach says, “Yeats’s ear produces the poem” (2012, 119). And listen to Dylan Thomas read “Fern Hill” on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XG1B_7r4y8. As Virginia Woolf said of the Elizabethans, “It is as if thought plunged into a sea of words and came up dripping” (1925, 81). The New York Times celebrated the 125th anniversary of the first time Ernest Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat” was published, on June 3, 1888, in the San Francisco Examiner. We can listen online to the classic voice of James Earl Jones delivering a dramatic reading (Luttrell 2013). Backed by the song “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” in all its various moods, the effect is amazing: http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/fitting-anniversary-for-caseys-whiff/? emc=tnt&tntemail0=y. For comparison, visit the Library of Congress online and listen to a 1909 recording of Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat” by De Wolf Hopper: http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/1097/. This is a must-hear. The generational divide in presentation is clearly evident.

I think back to Victor Hernandez Cruz at the 1994 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Waterloo, New Jersey, reading “Today Is a Day of Great Joy,” his voice exuberant with the uplift of an urgent message. I still have this poem. I can’t read it without hearing his voice. You can hear it too if you get the DVD of Bill Moyers’s Language of Life series, 1995. Also, listen to Marge Piercy reading “To Be of Use” (1973), her voice mellow, soft, and sure, her message strong and stretched out: http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=fWJZLXOKeNA. What has occurred to me is that our voices are not just the product of a sound box, air moving through the larynx and passing through the vocal chords. Our voices are an expression of who we are until that moment. The timbres of our voices are fashioned by the body—its materials and shape and size—just as the sound from a violin. But also all our personal griefs, joys, disappointments, losses, and successes, come through to color our voices.

SPEAKING THE VOICE OF THE POEM INTERVIEWER ALBERTA TURNER: “WOULD YOU PREFER THIS POEM TO BE READ SILENTLY, ALOUD, TO MUSICAL ACCOMPANIMENT?” DONALD HALL: “I WOULD PREFER THIS POEM TO BE READ ALOUD, BY ME.” —Donald Hall (1978, 184) Donald Hall, in Goatfoot, Milktongue, Twinbird, says that the poet is the true reader of the poem. The poets “speak the voice of the poem, which is the voice of the noise, all the wild inward stuff of sounds” (1978, 58). When I read a poem aloud for myself, or to students, I don’t have Dylan Thomas’s or Marge Piercy’s enchanting tones. But the masters help me understand to take the poem seriously, to create a space for speaking the poem, to present it with care in my own voice. I’ll read as naturally as possible, slowing it way down, giving the words their due without being overly dramatic. And I’ll read it again. I need to hear a poem more than once, to let the sound enter, to pluck some inner strings. We’ll want to encourage in students the habit of reading poems aloud and allow them time to do it. To catch the sounds. To tune the ear. Once the instrument is tuned, we’re on our way to making music. (For more about the power of hearing and reading poems aloud, see “Building Up a Friendship with Poetry” and “Poetry MTWTF” in Part 1 and “Dances with Words” in Part 3.)

THE MOVEMENT OF WORDS: CHOREOGRAPHING A POEM FOR CHORAL READING WHEN I READ A POEM I REINHABIT IT, I BRING THE WORDS OFF THE PAGE INTO MY OWN MOUTH, MY OWN BODY. I BECOME ITS SPEAKER AND LET ITS VERBAL MUSIC MOVE

THROUGH ME AS IF THE POEM IS A SCORE AND I AM ITS INSTRUMENTALIST, ITS PERFORMER.

—Edward Hirsch (1999, 5) Teachers will want to demonstrate, with students, various possibilities for a choral reading. Give them the tools they need to orchestrate their choral reading, then turn them loose to create beyond our imagining. To keep it simple in the beginning, I choose short poems so we can concentrate on the work of vocal choreography. I’ve often, with no thought to tone, just drawn an imaginary line down the middle of the group sitting around me. With me directing, one half takes one line or section, the other half takes another. Alternating, they can hear simple differentiation. Possibilities grow from there. In Part 3, the section titled “Dances with Words” describes how a young middle schooler, Yuv, orchestrated a call and response reading. A call and response reading like this can be very effective early on in introducing students to choral reading. To demonstrate, the teacher reads one line of a poem (the call) and gestures to the group to repeat that line or a part of the line (the response). Or the group decides which lines they think would sound best to repeat. “Things” by Eloise Greenfield (1978), in Honey, I Love, may seem more suited to younger students, but it is a good model for call and response, even for older students. It has a strong rhythm, each line seems to be end stopped, and there is repetition of lines built in. Slightly more intricate is an arrangement in which several individual voices punctuate the chorus. One voice pipes up when we least expect it, lending surprise and delight, or a sense of drama, depending on what tone is needed. For more complex choral readings, you might work with a small group in front of the class to show choices that are more nuanced. (When students are more confident, you can ask a group to fishbowl—do the actual choreography work, with everyone else observing.) You’ll want to talk out the choreography together, working line by line, section by section, saying them aloud, until everyone is satisfied with how it sounds when they say the whole poem. In a spoken chorus, timbre (quality of voice tone) may be one element to consider when deciding who reads what lines, in order to evoke a certain mood, emotion, atmosphere, or attitude. Higher-pitched, lighter voices, or deeper, more resonate voices, specially placed in a poem, can create an interesting, even moving, rendition. You might combine two or three voices in some places, or place a lone voice in a strategic place. You might repeat a line or phrase that isn’t repeated in the poem as is. You can insert a sound, a gesture, some movement into the reading, or as an accompaniment. The possibilities are endless. Something fun, and instructive, to do is to give various small groups the same poem. They go off to choreograph it, then return to present to each other. The similarities and differences will delight and amaze. Students may see the poem take on different meanings, different powers to affect listeners. Let’s turn to April’s poem, “Walking with Dogs,” which will be featured in the section called “Poems for All Seasons” in Part 3. I’ll reproduce the poem here, too, for convenience.

Read it through. How might you choreograph it for sound? For effect? Then read how, tuning up my ear for sounds and my mind’s eye for images, I think it through for choral-reading possibilities. WALKING WITH DOGS Rough dog charges the garden fence Don’t keep me away from flowers Soft dog rubs against the bench Let me sit with you and watch the boats Fancy dog prances down the path Give me my space Rough dog barges through the leaves Unleash me, set me free Perky dog jerks on the leash What’s this? What’s that? Sniff. Proud dog Lifts her head in a pose You may pet me now My dog someday —APRIL Let’s consider some options. I do this by hearing in my head what I’m suggesting—sort of like tasting the dish in your mind as you read the recipe—then saying out loud what I imagine. Choreographing “Walking with Dogs”

• At the simplest level, “Walking with Dogs” is tailor made as a poem for two voices or for two groups, one saying the left-hand side, the other saying the insets. • In a poem for three voices, or three groups, one takes the left-hand side, one the first lines of

the insets, one the second lines of the insets. • A more complex reading: A small group of, say, four or six, looking for variety of sound and action, might all say each left side (“Rough dog,” “Soft dog,” etc.), everyone modulating the sound for rough and soft, and so on. And a different voice, or a duo, reads the first line of each inset. These voices would emphasize the verbs, making the sound of the action: sensuously stretching it out, “ruuuuubs against the bench”; sharp, snappy, “JERKS on the leash!” Then a different voice reads, for each type of dog (six voices, not counting the last stanza), the second inset lines. These individual dogs would have very different sounds to fit their description: “Rough dog” might have a husky, baritone, no-nonsense voice; “Proud dog” would sound elegant, proper, and self-assured. All this would have to be discussed and determined as part of the planning for the reading. • The last stanza, the ending, is critical. Students will need to try out and listen carefully to the possibilities. As the teacher I would want to imagine ways the ending could be read in order to better support conversation. It could be, all say “My dog,” as usual. That would contrast with a lone voice saying “someday.” I think “someday” needs that lone plaintive sound of one person who is hoping against hope. A group sound there would be overpowering, would not help us feel the pang of one person’s longing. Or I could see one student, back to the audience, suddenly turning to face us, saying, “My dog … someday.” Something like that. How much fun is this? Think of the thought that goes into choreographing a poem. What insight. What attention to language. What ability to feel, to empathize. Think how this kind of experience will open up the reading of poems to come. Think what this will give the writers of poems as they revise—an understanding of what it means to listen for sound, to feel the rhythm and pace of the lines. To understand the role that breath, pause, modulation, silence, play in a poem. To realize the impact of words on a reader, a listener. Whether chorally or alone, we have a critical need to “read it aloud.”

ADDITIONAL SOUND TALK Attenborough, E., ed. 2001. Poetry by Heart: A Child’s Book of Poetry to Remember. New York: Scholastic. Behn, Robin, and Chase Twichell, eds. 1992. The Practice of Poetry. New York: HarperCollins. Favorite Poem Project. 2013. http://www.favoritepoem.org/project.html. (Robert Pinsky’s project. Anthologies and videos of individual Americans reading and speaking personally about poems they love.) Flynn, Nick, and Shirley McPhillips. 2000. “Let the Cricket Take Up Chafing: Sounds of Language.” In A Note Slipped Under the Door: Teachingfrom Poems We Love. Portland, ME: Stenhouse. Hirsch, Edward. 1999. How to Read a Poem. San Diego, CA: Harcourt.

Janeczko, Paul, ed. 2009. A Foot in the Mouth: Poems to Speak, Sing, and Shout. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick. Livingston, Myra Cohn, ed. 1995. Call Down the Moon: Poems of Music. New York: Margaret K. McElderry Books. Medina, Tony, and Louis Reyes Rivera, eds. 2001. Bum Rush the Page: a def poetry jam. New York: Three Rivers. Oliver, Mary. 1994. “Sound.” In A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry. New York: Harcourt Brace. Pinsky, Robert. 1998. The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. Rosen, Kim. 2009. Saved by a Poem. New York: Hay House. (Rosen includes in the back of the book a wonderful CD of poetry readings by different poets.) Rubin, Robert Alden. 1995. Poems Out Loud. New York: Algonquin Books.

CONNECTING WITH A POEM POETRY IS A LIFE-CHERISHING FORCE … FOR POEMS ARE NOT WORDS, AFTER ALL, BUT FIRES FOR THE COLD, ROPES LET DOWN TO THE LOST, SOMETHING AS NECESSARY AS BREAD IN THE POCKETS OF THE HUNGRY. —Mary Oliver (1994, 122)

When we connect with a poem some lifeblood is stirred within us. Some sensory nerve touched. Some curiosity tweaked. Some kinship sparked. Some empathy felt. If not, then that’s not the poem for us. At that time, or perhaps ever. We, as readers, bring ourselves to a poem. We meet in a wordful estuary where the salt of the poem mixes with the freshwater of our reading. As we read, an exchange takes place. An intimacy. We read the poem; the poem reads us. The first time I read Jo McDougall’s poem “Telling Time,” I had to get up and walk away. TELLING TIME My son and I walk away from his sister’s day-old grave. Our backs to the sun, the forward pitch of our shadows tells us the time. By sweetest accident he inclines his shadow, touching mine. —JO MCDOUGALL (2011, 248) In a poem of only thirty-six words, the soft strength of McDougall’s seemingly simple image struck an emotional blow that comes from knowing what human beings know. No matter how many times I read it, its power does not diminish.

EVA’S KEEPER

I’VE ALWAYS THOUGHT THAT ONE OF THE CHIEF VALUES OF POETRY IS THAT IT OFTEN EXPRESSES WHAT WE FEEL BUT HAVE BEEN UNABLE TO ARTICULATE. TO KNOW THAT OTHERS FEEL WHAT WE FEEL MAKES US LESS ALONE IN THE WORLD. —Maureen Barbieri (e-mail to the author) Let’s look at a poem Eva clipped into a section called “Keepers” in her notebook. The teacher had read it aloud to the class from a book called ’Til All the Stars Have Fallen (Booth 1989). It is not a difficult poem. The images are simple. What drew Eva to this poem? Why does she hold onto it? If you don’t come The sun will get smaller and smaller and the grass won’t green or the trees leaf and there will be no flowers or birdsong. The winds will blow cold and the nights will be dark without moonlight or stars for there will be no summer here if you don’t come. —MARGUERITE MACK (1989, 60)

I have a conversation with Eva about her connection to the poem. We sit together in the library corner, she with the poem in her notebook, I with a copy of my own.

Shirley:

Eva, you have this poem clipped in your notebook. Great idea. What were you thinking when the teacher first read it to the class?

Eva:

I didn’t know what it was about. I kept hearing “no.” The words gave me a sad feeling.

Shirley:

Did you want to hear it again?

Eva:

Well, we knew Mr. B. would read it again. He says you can’t hear a poem just once. He always picks ones that make us think. That’s a good poem.

Shirley:

The second time around, did you listen differently?

Eva:

Yeah. The next time I tried to figure it out more. I realized somebody is telling another person if you don’t come there won’t be any summer.

Shirley:

In fact, the title sets us up for that, right?

Eva:

I didn’t realize that until Mr. B. gave us all a copy. He always wants us to listen first then look at the poem for ourselves. (She opens her notebook.) Then I saw that the title was the first line. (She points to these lines.)

Shirley:

And the last line. Nice, right? Poem sort of leaps off the first line and lands on it again at the end. Like a dive. So, Eva, something about the poem caught your attention, created a mood. Is that what made you want to keep it?

Eva:

Well, the first line … (She closes her notebook.)

Shirley:

(We wait.) The first line?

Eva:

Last summer we went to Maine. Our family. And my grandparents. I got to bring Rebecca.

Shirley:

Oh, this reminds you of your summer. (I feel myself sag. The old “this reminds me of” syndrome. “Tit” in the poem for “tat” out here. But wait.) Great. You were all together in Maine. I love Maine.

Eva:

Dad hardly came at all. (She wafts her notebook up and down.) I promised Rebecca he would be there so we would have a good time with him.

Shirley:

Was he able to make it?

Eva:

He came the second week for two days. And had to go back. Then he came for a couple of days the next week. Then he had to go back. That must have been so disappointing for you, and for him. You must have missed each other. (We wait.) Thinking of your experience makes me hear the

Shirley:

poem a couple different ways now. It seems like the speaker of the poem may be pleading with someone to be there for that special time … Or, it could be more like what the speaker would like to say to a friend. A compliment to someone she cares about. (We wait.)

Eva:

Like she’s saying how much she loves him.

Shirley:

Yes, like that. I can see why this is a “keeper” for you. Should I read it? Or will you read it to me?

She reads with an understated clarity. No pretension. Her voice projects a sense of longing in stanza one, growing in pace. Her voice drops almost to a whisper by the last line of stanza three. She looks up. We smile, say thank you, and head back to class. Eva held onto this poem because she felt in company with the speaker. Perhaps it was subconscious at first. (“How does this make you feel?”) While maybe not a profound poem on the face of it, it was a poem she could read again and remember she was not alone in missing someone. She was hooked from the title, which is also the first line: “If you don’t come.” The personal connection Eva makes with this poem influences her ability to talk about it. What meaning she makes is deepened by taking the time to consider her feelings in light of the words and images. In the interview, I might have been tempted to remind her, when she calls the speaker “she,” or refers to the “you” as “him,” that she’s equating the speaker with the poet, or making a direct association with her own experience. Another reader might feel the effect of the poem not by a direct correlation, but by its sounds and rhythm as it lilts along, and the lingering mystery of who and what happens. But I would be unwise to interject at this sensitive point. Eva found a poem. A poem found Eva. That’s quite enough for now.

“NO LEARNING WITHOUT FEELING” AND IT WAS AT THAT AGE … POETRY ARRIVED IN SEARCH OF ME … I WHEELED WITH THE STARS, MY HEART BROKE LOOSE ON THE WIND. —Pablo Neruda (2004, 167) In her memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou (2009) shares the harrowing story of being raped when she was eight and about being mute for years afterward. There were no words. So in that silence, she memorized poetry. Her teacher, trying to break through the silence, challenged her to take a book of poetry home, to learn a poem by heart, and come back and say it. Under the porch one day, after not speaking for almost six years, she recited a sonnet from Shakespeare. She had a voice! As I write this today, I see in the New York Times Sunday Review “Opinion” section an

essay by Claire Needell Hollander called “No Learning Without Feeling” (2013). The essay is available at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/opinion/sunday/no-learning-withoutfeeling.html?pagewanted=all. Hollander is an English teacher at a public middle school in Manhattan. She quotes one of her students who referred to a poem they had shared together called “The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes (1995). “It’s sad,” the student said, “but it’s my favorite poem we worked on” (Hollander 2013). “So we should read poems that make us sad?” Hollander asked. He laughed. “Well, sadness, Ms. Hollander, is something people pretty much feel every day.” He looked up at her with a smile, incredulous.

PERSONAL EFFECTS When Edward, my husband-to-be, came from England to “claim my hand” in marriage, he brought two books: The Poet’s Progress: An Anthology of English Lyrical Verse (Jagger 1949) and a book of Scottish airs called Lyric Gems of Scotland. He had already claimed my heart by reading “loved poems” from the anthology. He proposed with this one (an excerpt here): There is a Lady sweet and kind, Was never face so pleased my mind; I did but see her passing by, And yet I love her till I die. —ANONYMOUS (CAN YOU IMAGINE?) On our wedding day he sang to me, “My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose” by Robert Burns. I felt it in my “deep heart’s core.” Many songs and poems later, over thirty-nine years, as he lay felled by the forces of a cruel stroke, he “sang,” with his last energy, this song. I leaned in very close to hear it: My love is like a red, red rose That’s newly sprung in June: My love is like the melody That’s sweetly played in tune… And fare thee weel, my only love, And fare thee weel awhile! And I will come again, my love, Though it were ten thousand mile.

—ROBERT BURNS (IN JAGGER 1949, 201, EXCERPTED HERE) My story is romantic and deeply personal. It demonstrates the effect of poems and songs in my relationship with my husband. But not everyone has been fortunate enough to find a poem or have a poem find them. If we, as teachers, take seriously the power of a poem to delight, to shake up, to sustain, to lift, to make strong, to stand alongside, we must find our own. Then we may help our students find theirs.

FOR HUNGRY WEEDS In a way this whole book is about connecting, feeling the effect of poetry on a personal level. But I will mention a few titles after leaving you with Wesley McNair, who says he continues to learn “how necessary poetry has become to me, like a hungry weed that finds the crack in the sidewalk” (2003, 192). Housden, Roger. 2003. Ten Poems to Open Your Heart. New York: Harmony Books. ——. 2004. Ten Poems to Last a Lifetime. New York: Harmony Books. ——. 2012. Ten Poems to Say Goodbye. New York: Harmony Books. Keillor, Garrison, ed. 2005. Good Poems for Hard Times. New York: Penguin. Kooser, Ted. 2008. Valentines. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. McEwen, Christian. 2011. World Enough and Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down. Peterborough, NH: Bauhan. McNair, Wesley. 2003. Mapping the Heart: Reflections on Place and Poetry. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University Press. Murray, Joan, ed. 2001. Poems to Live By in Uncertain Times. Boston: Beacon. Neruda, Pablo. 1995. Love: Ten Poems. Translated by Alastair Reid. New York: Miramax. Orr, Gregory. 2002. Poetry as Survival. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Pinsky, Robert. 1999. Americans’ Favorite Poems. New York: W. W. Norton. Rosen, Kim. 2009. Saved by a Poem. New York: Hay House. (Includes “Fifty Poems to Live by Heart,” page 230.)

DEALING WITH DIFFICULTY IF THERE IS NO ROOM IN POETRY FOR DIFFICULTY, WHERE IS DIFFICULTY TO GO? —Billy Collins (2003b, xviii)

Here is a story told to me by my friend Janet Angelillo, a prolific writer of prose, an insightful educator, a sensitive and observant human being. We’ve had many poem talks over the years. I took a poetry course a few years ago and I never felt so stupid in my life. Why was everyone else seeing all this stuff and I saw nothing? Made me understand why kids hate English class. I couldn’t wait to escape to the parking lot every afternoon. You might wonder what hope there is for the rest of the folks out here in poetryneverland. Those who find poems daunting to the point of scary. Those who once loved clapping and bouncing to Lear’s “The owl and the pussy cat went to sea / in a beautiful pea green boat” (1971, 28). Those who begged, “Read it again” to Silverstein’s, “Whosever room this is should be ashamed! His underwear is hanging on the lamp …” (2005, 35)—and haven’t found a poem since that titillates the way those poems did. Of course, Janet reads poetry and has her favorites. “I experience the extremes of poetry reading,” she told me, “from the words jumping off the page and into my life with brilliance to feeling as if it were written in another language and I have no clue. Mostly it’s somewhere in between, though I do find that reading a familiar poet makes it easier to understand. Jane Kenyon and Mary Oliver are like open pages.” Janet signed up for the course hoping to have conversations, to come further into the world of poetry, to make it more a part of her life. But the talk spun out from the poem and rarely came back to it. She felt mystified. Wanted to go home and curl up with a good Harlan Coben mystery. Janet also admits that she was unwilling to deal with difficulty. She wanted answers. However, she understands that “poetry is not about getting answers. Sometimes the poem needs to percolate over time. It doesn’t always speak to us right away.”

POETRY LEAP FACING AND COMMUNICATING, THAT WILL BE OUR LIFE, IN THE WORLD AND IN POETRY … SHOW THEM WHAT PASSION THEY POSSESS AND WE WILL ALL HAVE COME TO POETRY.

—Muriel Rukeyser (1996, 40) So, after the delight of poemplay in the early years, then what? All too often that initial enthusiasm is papered over in school by more “necessary” subjects. There are many demands for time. Subject matter to cover. Standards to connect to. Tests to prep for. Only the most stalwart of poem lovers will feel they can take much time for poetry beyond, perhaps, one unit of study, or attention paid during Poetry Month. We go from “Jack Sprat” to “The Raven” with lots of lean in between. Somewhere along the way, many students lose the opportunity to grow as readers of poems—to find poems they like, to be in conversation with others about their choices, to be affected by poems. Or even to witness the power and delight of poetry at play in the lives of those around them—one of the strongest influences by far. People may find poems “difficult” for different reasons. And there are degrees of difficulty. In the following pages, I talk about some aspects of our experience with poetry that might cause difficulty.

EXPERIENCE READING POEMS: HOW MANY POEMS HAVE YOU READ? Kim Addonizio tells the story of a student coming up to her to say he liked novels, but not poetry. “How many poems have you read?” she asked. He said not many, a few for class and he hadn’t liked them. “Ever run into a novel you didn’t like?” “Well, yeah,” he said (2009, 94). He hadn’t imagined that one could like some poems and not others. He had not read enough to find one for himself. He didn’t know there’s more than one way to enjoy a poem. “A few” being set before him, in some alien language to untangle—too difficult. A simpatico with poetry can build when we keep consistent company with poems and with those who read them; when we have time and opportunity to develop our own poetic taste. Fiction lovers don’t just read fiction in February. And in school, we don’t say, “We’re only going to sing in May” or “We’re only going to gym class in October.” Why would we only read and write poems for two weeks in March, or once a week during April, Poetry Month? Don’t get me wrong. Poetry Month has worked wonders at lifting people up, putting the spotlight on what is possible, what is exciting and imaginative in the world of poetry. For that time, we join others all over the country to focus on poetry. And maybe that’s where some will catch the spark. But, if I wanted to run the marathon, I wouldn’t just up and run the marathon on the appointed day. I would be running all year in order to be able to run that day. So it makes sense that in order to celebrate Poetry Month I would want to be engaged with poetry all year leading up to that special time. I would be ready to celebrate.

THE “ABOUT” FACTOR: WHAT IS THIS POEM ABOUT?

YOU DON’T HAVE TO UNDERSTAND SOMETHING TO BE AFFECTED BY IT. —Kim Addonizio (2009, 93) Janet Angelillo has another story. She joined a group that met in what was an old church converted to a winery. Seventeen people came and each brought three poems to read. The poems Janet read included Jane Kenyon’s (1996) “Let Evening Come.” At the end they mingled and responded to the poems they’d shared. One woman asked her, “Why would you choose to read a poem about death?” That question ruined the reading for Janet. She could feel the moments in the poem, the repetition like a chant, the slowing down, evening coming, a settling, the dwindling light. She felt peace. Not death. And even if she thought death, what would be so wrong with reading it? Often, sadly, by the time young people get to, say, upper elementary or middle school, a “good” poem has become “difficult,” something to study, to analyze. We try to figure out what the author is trying to say as though, as Sydney Lea puts it, “s/he had some awful throat disease” (1992, 18). We want to “figure it out.” Want to control it.

POEMCOMFORT THE MEANING OF POETRY IS TO GIVE COURAGE. A POEM IS NOT A PUZZLE THAT YOU THE DUTIFUL READER ARE OBLIGED TO SOLVE. —Garrison Keillor (2005, xvii) Charles, a seventh grader, once told me he knew how to tell a good poem. “The smallest number of words that can trick your mind.” To Charles, reading a poem was a process of puzzling to get the meaning the author “put into it.” With experience, students can begin to accept certain ambiguities and mysteries that poems offer. Reading and talking about poems together during read-aloud time is a good way to build up “poemcomfort.” Creating opportunities for students to self-select poems and read for enjoyment takes the stress away from always “figuring it out.” If we’re only reading one poem a month, the stakes are high for “getting” each one. As in reading any type of material, if we’re consistently reading all types of poems, we can afford to find some easier, some more difficult, and not worry about it.

THE MEANING MACHINE THERE’S AN ORGANIC AND IRREDUCIBLE ENERGY IN A GOOD POEM THAT CAN’T BE LOGICALLY ACCOUNTED FOR … YOU CAN TAKE THE POEM APART AND YOU WON’T FIND IT.

—Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux (1997, 118) Making meaning is probably the biggest goal readers say they have when reading poetry. In classroom discussions interpretation is the norm. If the poem’s construction, elements, and language allow readers to say what they think the poem is “about,” then the poem seems easier. And meaning has been “gotten.” But “getting meaning” is only one type of challenge, or pleasure, in a poem. Billy Collins writes that “the dominance of interpretation over other pleasurable aspects of a poem” might be that it’s the most teachable: “The easiest to discuss” and “the most susceptible to testing.” He wrote the poem “Introduction to Poetry” with the hope that readers would be allowed “to indulge more fully in the cluster of poetry’s imaginative and physical pleasures” (2002, 29). The fact is, some people enjoy reading poems that present different types of challenges. Some like a joyride of sound or wild imagination, or ambiguous illusions, or complex puzzles. We don’t mind it in crosswords or movies or mystery stories. Some of us borogoves can get mimsy at the mere thought of the Jabberwock. We can enjoy a poem because it’s strange, or silly, or satirical and lampoonish. Difficulty, then, can be a source of fascination.

FORMAL DIFFICULTY Some readers have what Reginald Shepherd (2007), writing on his blog, calls “formal” difficulty. The shape or construct of the poem is unfamiliar; the form violates conventions; it doesn’t typify what we think poems are like or should be. Recently, my friend Toby read a poem of mine. He found my structure a bit mystifying. “I’d like to read that again,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do with my voice in some places.” Intrigued, I begged him to continue. “Well, periods in the middle of a line … dashes … lines that jump over each other. It’s just a different way of reading.” Fair enough. Poets spend a lot of time revising, listening with their mind’s ear, reading their poems aloud. They’re not satisfied until it looks and sounds “right.” As it does in other forms of writing, surface features such as marks of punctuation, spaces, and line endings help guide the voice through the poem to express as closely as possible the poet’s own feeling of justrightness. For this, any poem can instruct us. However, let’s look at Jermane’s work with his sixth graders. In class Jermane puts up on the interactive whiteboard Arnold Adoff’s “The Way I See Any Hope for Later” from All the Colors of the Race. The way I see any hope for later, we will have to get over this color thing, and stop looking

at how much brown or tan there is in or on this woman or that man. stop looking. Start loving. —ARNOLD ADOFF (1982, 48) This poem is not “complex,” but it may be difficult to read in the way the words are situated on the page. “Difficulty” and “complexity” are not the same thing. Jermane and his students have read this poem before and noticed some highly unusual spacing but, at that time, they were interested in what the title suggested and talked about it. This time, Jermane asks students to read over the poem again to themselves. He says that by paying attention to line endings, spacing of words, and marks the poet uses, perhaps we can read the poem the way the poet might have heard it in his head. Jermane models how he might read the poem obeying its structure. They hear that Adoff’s placement of words, his spacing, gives the voice an emphatic sound, a sound of profound sincerity in what is being said, even a sense of urgency. Almost as though the speaker is thinking it for the first time. (For more on giving voice to poems and shaping them, see “The Music of It: Reading for Sound” in Part 2 and “Line by Line” in Part 3.) And Jermane doesn’t stop there. Another time, he puts up E. E. Cummings’s “Chansons Innocentes I” (see http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prm-MID/15398). Here’s an excerpt: in Justspring when the world is mudluscious —E. E. CUMMINGS (EXCERPT; 2013) What to do now? Again, hyphens, irregular spacing, words run together (“eddieandbill”). Could be a “formal” challenge. Reading aloud will tell the tale. Jermane invites several students to give voice, to use the poet’s “signals” to read with expression. In this spirit of finding things intriguing in poems, taking time to try things out, marveling over what we find, “difficulty” becomes “Isn’t this fascinating?” Students look through their folders for poems with interesting punctuation and shapes. They work with partners, reading together, paying attention to the marks—or lack of them—and other features. With attention and experience—reading aloud—students learn to listen when

they read, and (hello) listen when they write. (Note: It might be fun to use Jeff’s “Reading a Great Poem,” shown later in this section, to notice how he shapes for sound and effect. Also, Blackburn’s “The Yawn,” featured in “The Shape of It” earlier in Part 2, is ideal for this.)

FINDING A WAY INTO A POEM THIS IS ART, I SAID, NOT SCIENCE; THERE IS NO ONE PATH INTO THE POEM, NOR IS THERE ALWAYS A HIDDEN MESSAGE WITHIN IT. —Maxine Kumin (2002, 160) Legendary poet Maxine Kumin (2002), in an essay titled “Audience” in The Eye of the Poet, describes what it’s like to read aloud to different types of audiences all over the country. In some cases, students would come up after one of Kumin’s readings and say they’d never heard a poet read a poem before and were surprised that they understood it because they’d always thought they couldn’t. “What had I done? Nothing remarkable. I talked about the genesis of some of my own poems, discussed a metaphor, explained an allusion. I had asked that they give every difficult poem three chances, three careful readings. If, after that, the poem failed to work for them, they should feel free to move on” (Kumin 2002, 160). So, hearing poems read aloud and reading them aloud, as many poets suggest, is a way to crack open the door of fear and let in a little light. If readers are inexperienced, it might be helpful to read poems about things around us. Or read some poems that may have an emotional impact. Poems that get to the core of what we share as human beings. Of course, there is no linear progression of difficulty when reading and enjoying poems. A poem can allow for layers of thought. Do we put our toes into the water? Or do we bounce on the board and take a dive? Looking for a Door

It is true that some poems seem impossible to understand. I’ve tried for years, for example, to “understand” some poems in The New Yorker. (Give me a thumbs-up for putting this out there.) But I am writing more joyfully at this moment because I just read “The Dictionary” by Charles Simic in the issue that just arrived in my mailbox (2013, 43). A “good morning” poem from a friend to greet the day. Sometimes, though, it seems we can’t find a way into a poem at the outset. As readers we slip under the title and peer around the lines and stanzas, looking for an opening. Let’s look at a poem I wrote one long and trying winter to see how you might make your way into it. Just for an exercise, read it and eavesdrop on yourself, keeping the following questions in the back of your mind: What do I think just looking at the shape of the poem? What do I think when I read the title? What do I see in my mind’s eye as I read the first stanza, and as I read on? Where does this poem take me? Am I connecting to the poem? Where? Do I need to stop and think here? Need to reread? What makes me push on? What am I thinking just after I read the last line?

ALONG SAPLINES Looking out at you, you skinny old tree, waving your rough arms in place like a tired warrior with nothing but a flurry of white between you and victory. Nothing’s going to sap your sweet soul just because you have to stick it out in this hard place. You have the chimes of all time locked inside you. And today, stuck here too, looking out at you, I can feel the echo of your heart ring. —SHIRLEY MCPHILLIPS (2013) I asked my friend Derek, a reader of novels but not poetry, to read “Along Saplines.” Normally, I would hope he, and anyone, would just read the poem, receive it. I hoped he would like it. For the purpose of noting how he found a way in and moved along in the reading, he agreed to be explicit with his inner dialogue, reproduced just after this paragraph. Then let’s look at your reading next to Derek’s. That is, how did you make your way through this poem? Derek: First of all, it’s short. Short lines. The pain, if it strikes, will be short lived. Mostly fourline stanzas. Doable. “Along Saplines.” Aha. Sap. I see “skinny old tree.” I’ll have to think more about “saplines.” The first two lines, something I recognize—“a skinny old tree.” So far so good. I can keep going. Someone’s “looking out at you.” Oh, someone is addressing the tree. Why? Not sure yet. I can picture the branches waving, slowly. Tired. I’m tired of cold too. These dreary

days. Dragging on. I get this. “With nothing but a flurry / of white between you / and victory.” “Flurry of white.” Somebody’s watching a tired old tree out there in the snow, waving its branches around slowly in the wind. Tired. Rough arms. Kinda sad. Oops. First stumble… “between you and victory”? This blurs the image I was seeing. Victory. Is there a game going on? A battle? Just like a poem to trip me up soon as I get started. Never mind. I don’t have to figure that out now. Just keep going. Next part… “Nothing’s / going to sap your sweet / soul just because you / have to stick it out / in this hard place.” Runs along like a sentence. “Sap your sweet soul.” Nice sound. Words moving along here. Sap again. Hmm. The poet is getting personal with this old tree. Giving it a pep talk. Some courage. “You have the chimes / of all time locked inside / you …” Chimes? Of all time? What chimes? Locked inside the tree? Here we go again. I’m feeling a bit clueless about this. But I’m liking the words … “chimes / of all time… inside …” I like the rhyming sounds. So I’m not totally clueless. … “And today, stuck here / too.” Hello. The speaker’s back. Stuck too? Yeah, it’s a battle all right. You’re stuck, in the same place, arms flailing. Not able to uproot, to make a change. And it’s cold. Connecting with this tree now. Keep going. This is getting heavy. “I can feel the echo / of your heart ring.” I’m feeling some energy here. The poet has something going on with this tree. Some ringing going on between the two of them. Some echo. A tree has rings inside. But wait. This says “heart RING.” Oh, chimes! The end. Hey, that wasn’t so bad. Now, about those “saplines.” Hmm. What are Derek’s points of entry into “Along Saplines”? How does he hook his brain into the poem? This is helpful when thinking about pushing through difficulty. Derek’s Points of Entry: “Along Saplines”

• Feels comfortable with size, shape of poem • Recognizes the image in the first stanza; it helps welcome him in • Identifies a “voice,” speaking to object, finds basic structure • Rides with sounds of language • Questions ambiguous places but is not stymied • Identifies with the struggle of speaker and object Derek was going for meaning from the beginning but was willing to put that off for a while. He still has questions. The title didn’t help him into the poem but it set up a mystery. Sometimes poems have fanciful, even obscure language that can trip people up. Saplines is a word I invented. A play on lifelines. Derek seems to take pleasure in wondering about it.

Derek’s reading of this poem may sound methodical, not how we would want to “enjoy” a poem. But he gamely did what he was invited to do and tried to trace his thinking as he read. Having found some points of entry, he made it through the poem fairly easily and enjoyed some parts of it. He connected briefly, is left with some questions, but he might be willing to go back and give it another go. You might wonder how I, as the author, felt about Derek’s reading. Sometimes poets are asked, “Don’t you get annoyed when people think your poem is about something that you didn’t intend at all? Or they don’t get it?” Louise Rosenblatt, in her seminal essay “The Transactional Theory of Reading and Writing,” said, “No two readings, even by the same person, are identical … no one else can read aesthetically—that is, experience the evocation of—a literary work of art for us” (2005, 14). Another take on this idea is in a line I like from the coming-ofage novel Black Swan Green by British writer David Mitchell. The narrator, thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, says, “Once a poem’s left home it doesn’t care about you” (2007, 146).

THE POET IS LIKE A NIGHTINGALE—THE POET IS A NIGHTINGALE: READING SYMBOLICALLY A POET IS A NIGHTINGALE, WHO SITS IN DARKNESS AND SINGS TO CHEER ITS OWN SOLITUDE WITH SWEET SOUNDS; HIS AUDITORS ARE AS MEN ENTRANCED BY THE MELODY OF AN UNSEEN MUSICIAN, WHO FEEL THAT THEY ARE MOVED AND SOFTENED, YET KNOW NOT WHENCE OR WHY. —Percy Bysshe Shelley (1821) In Shelley’s essay “A Defence of Poetry,” from which the preceding quote is taken, the singing of the nightingale becomes a metaphor for writing poems, and listening to the bird becomes a metaphor for reading them. For me, this is a perfect description of the relationship between writers and readers of poems. What happens between the poet and the reader depends on figurative language—simile, metaphor. The writer and reader collaborate in an interactive process. When the poet creates new relationships between two things not usually recognized as being alike, the reader can think new things. Perhaps some difficulty with figurative language, which is intended to clarify, lies in the experience of reading. Some students are not accustomed to reading in order to delight in seeing things through different lenses, reading in order to “think new things,” so making this exchange through figurative language might seem difficult. Also, looking for the “correct” meaning or interpretation can contribute to an erroneous belief that there is only one interpretation of a poem, so thinking beyond that one interpretation is shut down. Perhaps some difficulty lies in the experience of writing. Sometimes students are asked to create similes and metaphors as lists out of thin air, for practice. These attempts can be entertaining, and seemingly apt within themselves. Or not. Isolated listing can result in some puzzling images, like a couple I saw posted in a hallway: “The bear charged the tent like an

arrow”; “The sun was an orange exploding on the treetops.” It may be that constructing comparative lines can call attention to the fact that, hey, there are linguistic devices called similes and metaphors. But then the question becomes, “Yes, but what are they for?” The answer lies in the poem itself, and in the interaction between poem and reader when we enter into the world of the poem. And, of course, when as writers constructing a poem, we search the language for clarity and grace. Kooser (2005) writes that simile and metaphor have different personalities. Simile is perhaps easier to understand. It is more casual. We are accustomed to using it in everyday speech: Walked through here like a bull in a china shop; follows me around like a puppy; as nice as pie; stubborn as a mule. Metaphor is stronger. This doesn’t mean it’s “better.” It is an implicit form of comparison, as Shelley demonstrates with his nightingale. It compares two things that are not usually thought of as being alike. This type of comparison delights and surprises.

JEFF’S FANDANGO A FIGURE OF SPEECH IS NOT JUST AN ORNAMENT THAT A POET ATTACHES TO A POEM THE WAY PEOPLE PUT GLASS BALLS ON CHRISTMAS TREES. A METAPHOR OR SIMILE SHOULD BE USED TO CLARIFY A POEM. —Ted Kooser (2005, 125) Jeff, a ninth grader, chose metaphor to show what happens when words meet in his imagination. Here’s his poem. READING A GREAT POEM A dust devil of words ROARS up from the loose sand of sound and spins me into a tango, a mightyfandango, then bows to my heart’s wild applause. I would say that Jeff, as a reader of poems, is learning about the tool of figurative language —the work it does in a poem. As a writer, needing language to create his own poems, he is

learning how to use that tool. Difficulty (or challenge, or struggle) is part of what we do, what any creative person does. (See “Dances with Words” in Part 3 to follow how Jeff finally crafted his poem.) Because Jeff’s dust devil is not an “ornament,” but an exact comparison of what he wants to show, what he wants readers to understand, it will not be difficult. It will enlighten.

GOING THERE: POETRY YOGA A POEM CAN SUMMON ME TO AN EDGE THAT SCARES ME, BUT ONE I KNOW I NEED TO FACE. —Kim Rosen (2009, 49) Sometimes difficulty lies in the content of a poem, not in a technical aspect. The way the music of the poem connects us to a deep feeling, or takes our memory to a tender place. And yet we know sometimes we have to go there. Take an emotional risk. Sometimes students are ready before their teachers are for poems that challenge emotionally. In the New York Times essay mentioned earlier, Hollander (2013) writes that middle school students turn often to highly charged young adult novels. “The poems and stories they receive enthusiastically are the ones that pack the most emotional punch … For teachers, emotion is our lever. The teen mind is our stone.” Some people, struggling to stay in touch with their own emotional and spiritual lives, find poems as touchstones. In the “Well” section of the New York Times, Tara Parker Pope (2013) wrote a piece called “Expressing the Inexpressible.” She explains that writing poetry, talking about poems, gives some people a way to “grapple with complex emotions” (D4). When Pope asked why they found poetry healing, one woman said, “It helps us get to the core of how we are feeling. The simplicity, the bare bones of it, helps us deal with our fears” (Pope 2013, D4). Stretching beyond the comfort zone is what Kim Rosen calls the “yoga of poetry” (2009, 49). Being invited into someone else’s inner life can be disconcerting, even disturbing. We can turn away. Or we can enter into a relationship with the poem, perhaps better to understand the human condition we share with others the world over. In the safety of Jay’s classroom, Emily writes about many things that weigh on her mind. While working on persona poems (see Part 3), she wrote about a family friend who had died of cancer. A persona poem was the perfect form for “going there.” It allowed her to take on the friend’s voice in order to explore and express her own feelings, to say the unsayable. A DIFFERENT KIND OF SEVEN Lying on the couch like it’s my job, filled with sickness and pain watching TV all day

how boring it is, I want to be outside. How I wish I were riding horses or playing with colorful balloons. Didn’t get to go to school much, didn’t get to be seven much before I had to go to the next hospital, then the next and the next. Luckily I made my Communion, the thing I really wanted to do, one of the best days of my life, the day I was just like other kids, the day I could be just like them. I will miss my two loving sisters who always make me smile, and my mom and dad who do everything to make me better. In Heaven I will watch over them, seeing all the great things they will do. In Heaven I will do all the things I can’t and this sickness won’t knock me down, not my family or other cancer sufferers, we will find a cure together we will find a cure.

Knowing where difficulties might lie for us in reading poems, where difficulties might be for others, helps us, as teachers, to do these things: • Confer with our readers and writers • Demonstrate how we might deal with something difficult in a poem • Remember to read aloud and talk about various types of poems with students • Arrange time for students to read and talk with others consistently • Demonstrate and work with writers on the work of poetic devices as they craft

ADDITIONAL ARTICLES Collins, Billy. 2002. “Poetry, Pleasure, and the Hedonist Reader.” In The Eye of the Poet: Six Views of the Art and Craft of Poetry, ed. David Citino. New York: Oxford University Press. Shelley, Percy Bysshe. 1821. “A Defence of Poetry.” Poetry Foundation. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/essay/237844. Shepherd, Reginald. 2007. “Defining Difficulty in Poetry.” Reginald Shepherd’s Blog. http://www.reginaldshepherd.blogspot.com/2007/01/defining-difficulty-in-poetry.html.

POEM TALK A GREAT POEM PROVIDES MANY SIMULTANEOUS PLEASURES, WHICH ARE ALSO DEMANDS—THAT WE HEAR, THAT WE THINK, THAT WE IMAGINE, THAT WE CONNECT.

—Lawrence Raab (1999, 11)

Like the spring in Robert Frost’s “The Pasture,” the spring of our creative core needs tending. Realizing this, wanting this, many teachers join poetry reading groups. Or, not having access to one, they start their own. This investment pays dividends larger than one can imagine. Unlikely groups can spring up without much fanfare and have the most profound effect. One spring, when my family lived in upstate New York in a rural dairy farming community, I invited three or four farmers’ wives for coffee and fresh cherry cobbler. I wanted to impress them with my pastry prowess and take their minds off the fact that I had chased their husbands and sons off our property during deer hunting season. Adding insult to injury, I had the chutzpah to inquire as to why the boys were not in school! Right before my homemade offering I read Marge Piercy’s (1973) poem “To Be of Use,” a concept these women practiced daily. That was the start of something fine. A couple of times a month we met for a seasonal treat and to read a poem or two. A true tasting of life’s abundance. Like adults, students need to read and talk with others about poems. Tony Hoagland, in an article in Harper’s Magazine, offers this about the need for poetry in our culture: From such compact structures of language … so much can be reinforced that is currently at risk in our culture … Poems build our capacity for imaginative thinking, create a tolerance for ambiguity, and foster an appreciation for the role of the unknown in human life … In everything we have to understand, poems can help. (2013, 17)

MEETING A POEM Depending on experience and confidence with poetry, it may be less intimidating for students to learn to talk about poems as part of the read-aloud. Group talk and partner pairing can be supportive, as students become aware of many ways to respond and connect to poems. Poems that are shorter and not highly symbolic, with maybe just a bit of a challenge, will seem doable. Best, certainly, if the teacher is drawn to the poem in some personal way. Better, if the teacher connects with the poem in a way that shows when she holds it, when she reads it aloud. After all, the teacher will be demonstrating how one may find a poem. What it means to be affected by a poem. Not best, perhaps, to choose a poem simply because it’s suggested to “fit”

a standard, or, as someone, sadly, once said to me, “I only read poems that rhyme and are funny. They won’t sit still for anything else.” The death of poetry as we know it. Eventually, we will want to read aloud and talk about some poems that take us out of our comfort zone. Poems that ask us to stretch to places we don’t ordinarily go. (See “Dealing with Difficulty” earlier in Part 2.)

CONVERSATIONAL ETIQUETTE If students are not accustomed to having focused conversation with others around a poem, they will need some support. A list like the one that follows is not new to teachers who have taught their students ways to talk respectfully and sustain conversation in group work. But it’s worth showing again. Some conversation starters, like “I notice …” and “That makes me think …,” help the individual have something to say. That’s necessary always, but it’s not a dialogue. We also want to encourage a back and forth of ideas, an exchange (“I see it another way …”) that develops into conversation. These are some words we might expect to hear when thoughtful people talk to one another about something they’ve read in common. They are “starters,” not fill-in-the-blanks, not a check-off list. • When I read this poem … • I notice … • This makes me think … • I’m wondering … • I’d like to add … • I see it another way … • Or it could be that … • That caught my attention too … • I’m wondering if anyone else … • I’m thinking the same thing … • Listen to this part.… • Here’s an example of that … • When I read this part, I … • The way the author … reminds me of … (another book, character, poem, issue, experience)

• This makes me want to think further about … • Another poet (poem) who does this is … • What if we read it another way … • I’d like to try this (poetic device, strategy) in my poem … Thoughtfulness, to me, means consideration of others’ feelings, an openness to opinions and perspectives of others as we clarify our own. It also means bringing the “mind to the task.” Students can be nurtured in thoughtfulness when we teachers demonstrate thoughtfulness in all things: in our language and demeanor; when we help students find thoughtful ways to talk; when we notice and make public thoughtful behavior. I want to add that when students read and talk about various kinds of poems consistently, they can begin to find enjoyment in “puzzling” a poem with others and will accept more challenging poetry. (See “Dealing with Difficulty” earlier in Part 2.)

COMING INTO “THE PASTURE”: AN EARLY CONVERSATION Kirsten’s class is accustomed to talking about poems during read-aloud. She chooses mostly contemporary poems, poems she feels students can “dig into.” Now, small groups of three or four meet to discuss poems of their own choosing. They are not as experienced with making their own conversation around a poem without her. Kirsten will observe and find teaching points. She hopes their prior read-aloud work will be a support. Each student in the group will have a chance to lead a discussion about a poem of his or her choice after consultation with Kirsten. Today Josh, the designated leader of one group, explains that he found the book You Come Too by Robert Frost (1959) on his father’s bookshelf. He has chosen “The Pasture” because his father, who grew up in New England— Frost country—memorized it in school and has recited it to Josh. Each student in the group has received a copy beforehand in order to prepare for the discussion. Each has underlined parts that intrigue, surprise, puzzle, please, and has written marginal notes or questions. They’re ready to talk. As you read my notes, you might notice how their talk goes: How do they begin? What sorts of things do they say to get into the poem? At what point do they shift, if they do, from “mentioning” to responding to one another? Where does the conversation begin? How do they help one another come into the conversation, if they do? What points or issues come up that could be taken further? Where could they get deeper when they meet again? THE PASTURE I’m going out to clean the pasture spring; I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away

(And wait to watch the water clear, I may): Isha’n’t be gone long.—You come too. I’m going out to fetch the little calf That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young It totters when she licks it with her tongue. Isha’n’t be gone long.—You come too. ROBERT FROST (1959, 14) Notes from My Working Notebook on Talk About “The Pasture”

• Josh reads poem aloud. Asks another group member to read it aloud after him. Something the leader always does. Easing into the zone. • Quiet. Someone speaks. (No calling on.) • Lucia: It’s short. Two stanzas. (They’ve been taught poetic terms: stanzas, lines, white space …) • Michael: It rhymes, second/third lines: “away / may—young / tongue” • Ariel: Repetition, “you come too,” end of each stanza. A lull. Have run out of structural and poetic devices? • Lucia: Short. Easy to memorize. • Michael: Maybe because it’s “steady” and rhymes. • Josh: Hasn’t happened yet. Takes place before whatever happens happens. • Ariel: A familiar task. “Frost” kinda enjoys it. “Watch water clear … the little calf.” • Josh: Feels like you’re Frost’s friend (tone). Want to go with him when he says, “You come too.” • Ariel: Yeah, like an invitation. Want to say “Okay. Let’s go.” • Josh: Can picture him trying to get a friend to come with him. Like I do sometimes. • Michael: “Fancy,” old-fashioned words: “sha’n’t,” “fetch,” “totters.” Why? • Lucia: Paints picture. Could sketch the images because of his words (“if I could draw”). A lull—

• A “running out of steam” feeling. What else to say? All look down at papers. • Lucia: I like him. It’s like he’s telling me a secret, and only me. • Ariel: Who? Is it a “he”? • Lucia: It’s Frost! So yes, a “he.” • Josh: Well, somebody. Could be a “she.” • Michael: No, Frost is a man! He’s asking his friend to come with him. He says exactly what he’s going to do. Josh, Frost expert, pulls another poem from his folder and starts to tell something about Frost’s life as if to help answer the question about who the speaker is. At this point Kirsten intervenes to give some feedback before time is up. She says they have done what discussion groups do: notice, lay out thoughts first, then find something that’s niggling them to come around and talk more about. She cites places in the conversation where she noticed that they stopped listing and started listening. That’s where conversation began. Kirsten acknowledges that they have barely begun to flesh out something of interest. She asks what they found intriguing to explore. Michael wants to pursue the “old-fashioned” words. Also, the issue about who is the “speaker” of the poem created a lot of energy. Lots of folks, even adults, wonder about that question. It’s important because the answer has implications for writing poems as well. They decide the “speaker” issue is fodder for further talk, and research, about a poem as a construction. (For more on this, see the next section in Part 2, titled “Who Is the Speaker in a Poem?”)

REFLECTIONS ON THE TALK Often a beginning discussion is more literal as the participants figure out what this writing is before them. That’s necessary. But it may require another sitting, and more experience in general, to help students learn ways to expand or layer their thinking, to go deeper. Some poems lend themselves to several discussions to get past the mentioning stage. Some poems, like the imagistic “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams, have been talked about for years. It’s possibly the most talked about poem in history. And still we wonder, and still we talk. Eventually, we want to help students imagine how this, or any poem, might play out in our lives, the place where it matters. Does it move us? What is our connection to it, if any? What does it make us feel, remember, consider, muse about, rethink? What do we think we know or understand having read and taken in this poem? Is this a keeper? A touchstone? Will I pass this one along? Certainly, we won’t be connecting to every poem we read. But we can get better at becoming open to the possibilities. We can learn different ways to enter and roam around in a poem. Also, this poem may not be the one that has the greatest personal impact at the moment.

But it will be one among many that we experience. We may not know right away where the influence lies. We could meet this poem, and Mr. Frost, somewhere again down the road (perhaps where they converge). Kirsten alluded to other issues to explore. Besides “fancy language” and who is the “speaker,” perhaps there are some larger themes suggested by “The Pasture.” Thinking longer and deeper will have to be nurtured. I can be moved to tears by this poem—its simplicity, its sensitivity. Perhaps it has to do with setting. Maybe because I grew up in the country, I can feel again a little of the loneliness that sometimes accompanies those acts of duty and responsibility. The longing for company. I can also sense a deep pleasure in simple pastoral observations—“watch the water clear”; “it totters when she licks it.” Those sounds. Those images. How might such sights and sounds play out in an urban setting? How is it that simple things can have real staying power, can give such satisfaction? Josh feels a friendship with the speaker. What is informing that feeling? Questions like these can lift the conversation out of the poem itself. And we want students to have that experience. The particulars helping us consider the larger questions. Speaking of larger questions, teacher educator Maureen Barbieri shared with me her story about reading “The Pasture” when she was in school. The teacher asked students to read the poem through a different lens. What if the calf were an idea? Then the idea might be fledgling, a belief being born. “Stay and watch the water clear,” for example, could be the idea or thought becoming more clear in one’s mind. The idea or belief, like the newborn calf, tottering at first, then becoming stronger, able to stand up on its own legs with conviction. “You come too,” might be an invitation to join others in talking about or following an idea or belief. And so on. Maureen loved doing this. “That whole new way of looking at things. It marked me for life.” It occurs to me that this might be an interesting way to bring about awareness of metaphor. Of stretching the mind for the enjoyment of reading and writing poems. But not for trying to suggest just one interpretation of what the poet is “trying to say.” To counter that, and stretch thinking, what if students looked at the poem through several different lenses, or did a “poetry pairing” (see the next section, “Side by Side: Poetry Pairings”). As a teacher, Kirsten is empowering her students, over time, to take in a poem and find something in it for themselves. She is not always the one prompting response, asking questions as though she had already figured everything out that is “worthy” to talk about. How dull not to be open for new delight. She wants to experience the poem with the students, almost as though she’s looking at it for the first time. Because to experience a poem with others can help us see it anew. And so she listens. She nurtures response, then more response, then response to response. Then they all dig around for something compelling to entertain. I want students to talk naturally about poems, perhaps with a tentative voice, open and thoughtful. Sometimes passionate. Enjoying the light coming through. After all, we respond in different ways, taking what we need. But, whatever we’re doing, we’ll want to make sure that Billy Collins’s (1996) hose for beating the meaning out of poems is wound up and stashed in the garage. Before the screaming begins. (You can also read Collins’s poem “Introduction to Poetry” at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176056.)

SIDE BY SIDE: POETRY PAIRINGS WHEN I READ THINGS LIKE THIS STORY AND THIS POEM, IT MAKES ME GRATEFUL. MY MOM ALWAYS SAYS TO BE GRATEFUL, BUT I DON’T ALWAYS DO IT. —Alexa, grade 5 To honor Mother’s Day, the New York Times, in its weekly “Poetry Pairing” series, matched Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “To Any Reader” (2007) with Joyce Wadler’s (2013) article “On the Road, with Mothers.” The pairing features a poem alongside an article “that echoes, extends or challenges that poem’s themes” (Schulten 2010). TO ANY READER As from the house your mother sees You playing round the garden trees, So you may see, if you will look Through the windows of this book, Another child, far, far away, And in another garden, play. But do not think you can at all, By knocking on the window, call That child to hear you. His intent Is all on his play—business bent. He does not hear; he will not look, Nor yet be lured out of this book. For, long ago, the truth to say, He has grown up and gone away, And it is but a child of air That lingers in the garden there. —ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON (2007, 116) Wadler’s article is a daughter’s humorous account of the hazards and travails of going on a road trip with her mother. The Times directs people to read the poem and article and to say something on the Times website. Not having a class of my own, I alerted Jay immediately to this idea. Here’s the best part: Two weeks to the end of school, while in the midst of working with students on homage poems, he leapt into action. He has already told me, “If it were not

for poetry at this time of year, none of us would be left standing. Poetry saves us. And we love it, right up until the end.” Jay, in his own words: “In planning the poetry pairing, I decided to put Fly Away Home, the picture storybook by Eve Bunting (1991), a tale of a homeless boy and his father living in a busy airport, with the poem ‘The 1st,’ by Lucille Clifton. In this poem the family has been evicted from their home. The speaker looks back on that day from her childhood perspective.” THE 1ST What I remember about that day is boxes stacked across the walk and couch springs curling through the air and drawers and tables balanced on the curb and us, hollering, leaping up and around happy to have a playground; nothing about the emptied rooms nothing about the emptied family. —LUCILLE CLIFTON (1987, 21) “Earlier,” continued Jay, “we read Fly Away Home together on the rug. We stopped to discuss and think out loud about the characters, the problems, the symbols and themes. “At another time, I read ‘The 1st’ out loud a couple of times with the students then gave each student a copy to mark up and use when we put the two readings side by side. These are some of the questions we considered: • How does the poem make you feel? • What is the speaker expressing in the poem? • What issues do the poem and story have in common? • Does the poem offer a similar or different perspective from the story? “The students were very comfortable with the process. They spoke readily and confidently. When I needed clarification or when I felt they were ‘on to something,’ then I pushed them for more. I don’t have an exact transcript of the students’ conversation. But here are some excerpts from my notes. Pairing Fly Away Home and “The 1st”

• Characters in both don’t have houses, don’t have a lot of money, but they do have family. • Both families used to have homes, and both pieces are written from the kid’s perspective. • In the poem, the kids are making fun with it. Maybe because it is just happening in the moment, and it hasn’t been the same routine for a long time like with Andrew in the airport in Fly Away Home. • The kid in the poem is focusing on the positive, and Andrew in the book is focusing more on the negative. • The kids in the poem are really young (from the illustration), so they just see piled up boxes as a playground, and they are not thinking about not having a home. • In the poem, the kids’ parents most likely didn’t tell them they were without a home … maybe they just said, “Okay, we’re moving.” • The poet remembers it (playground of packed boxes) as happy, not sad, so she probably has a place now and didn’t give up. • I felt sad for Andrew in Fly Away Home, but it seems hopeful because of the bird, and I think the person in the poem got back on track, because she doesn’t say, “Oh, I remember that one day was the day that twisted my life.” • When I read things like this story and this poem, it makes me grateful. My mom always says to be grateful, but I don’t really do it. • Yeah, you don’t really realize what you have until you lose it.

Poetry Pairings Help Students Stretch Their Thinking and Make New Connections • Pairing supports revisiting pieces of writing to enjoy them. • Readers are not looking for “right answers,” but rather are fleshing out ideas. • Expectations we have for certain genres are rearranged when the two pieces meet; despite their different shapes and devices, both genres can help readers consider issues, themes, big ideas arising from the text. • Moving back and forth between genres reinforces the strengths and workings of both. • Themes and issues can be explored more deeply through comparing, evaluating, listening to others’ points of view.

MORE POEM TALK Academy of American Poets. 2013. “How to Read a Poem.” Poets.org. http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/280. Peacock, Molly. 1999. How to Read a Poem … and Start a Poetry Circle. Darby, PA: Diane Publishing.

WHO IS THE SPEAKER IN A POEM? From the first word I read in a poem, indeed from the title, I begin to wonder who the speaker is and guess that it’s the poet speaking to me directly. When Choice Literacy’s Brenda Power sent me Mekeel McBride’s (1995) “A Little Bit of Timely Advice,” I was sure Brenda was speaking to me by sending it. But was Mekeel speaking to me by writing it? Mekeel didn’t know me then. And she might have been speaking to herself, having an internal dialogue. Or the speaker might have been a surrogate. Funny. A LITTLE BIT OF TIMELY ADVICE Time you put on blue shoes, high– heeled, sequined, took yourself out dancing. You been spending too much time crying salty dead-fish lakes into soup spoons, holding look-alike contests with doom. Baby, you need to be moving. Ruin ruins itself, no use unplanting what’s left of your garden. Crank up the old radio into lionlooking-for-food

music; or harmonica, all indigo, breathing up sunrise. Down and out’s just another opinion on up and over. You say you got no makings for a song? Sing anyway. Best music’s the stuff comes rising out of nothing. —MEKEEL MCBRIDE (1995, 71) Hypothesizing about the speaker is part of what we do when we read a poem. In case you think considering the speaker is purely academic, a question that only writing teachers or students in MFA programs or fifth graders like to bat around, consider a real-life story. A while back poet Norma Bernstock joined her writers’ group for a public “fair” in support of the arts. Besides hosting a celebration, they were hoping to attract community support for their efforts. Periodically someone would stand up to read. Bernstock read her poem “A Woman Sips Coffee at Starbucks.” A WOMAN SIPS COFFEE AT STARBUCKS Her moist lips grip the paper cup rim and I wish I was that cup touched in that way. When she bites into a bagel, her cheeks undulate like waves. She chews

mouth closed, gentle roll of the jaw. Oh to place my hands on her face, close my eyes and disappear into that smooth slow sway. Afterward, an attendee sent an e-mail to the organizer to say (and I’ll type it as he did), “The poets have to be careful of the context of their poetry.” He pointed out that one of the “womens poems had strong sexual over tones about her self and another women using coffee to express her desires.” He said he didn’t care if she was “straight or homosexual I had my daughter present …” He felt that “this is a creative outlet for us, not a platform for their agenda.” Whoa. Needless to say, Norma was taken aback. She feels that her poem is sensual, but not sexual. The genesis of the poem was someone she observed at Starbuck’s. So there are two characters, the “I” observing, and the “she” drinking coffee. And yes, Norma feels the “I” is her voice, but she didn’t necessarily see or feel everything at the time that the speaker of the poem expresses. That was created later as she worked on the poem. The e-mailer made three assumptions: that Norma was the speaker, that she was obviously lesbian, and that she shared her poem to advance a lesbian agenda. While Norma has no problem at all with a lesbian agenda, it is not hers. Her hope was to let the observation take her somewhere, to write a good poem. By assuming the speaker’s identity, then casting judgment based on that, the e-mailer closed himself off from what he might have discovered or observed through the poet’s eyes and honest words.

THE VOICES OF THE POETS In the spirit of inquiry, I contacted some poet friends to find out how they think about the role of the speaker in their poems. Do they consider themselves the speaker? Or is the speaker imagined? Does it matter? A friend, Alastair, sent me back to that famous DWEB (dead white English boy), Shakespeare. In “Sonnet 130,” the speaker is enamored of a woman with wiry hair and bad breath. So, does this mean that Shakespeare himself thought this about his wife, or even another woman? Whatever he intended, Shakespeare created a voice who speaks his poem, a persona. (See “Putting on the Mask: Persona Poems” in Part 3.) Naomi Shihab Nye wrote to me, “I do not always think the ‘I’ in a poem is myself at all. But as for alerting the reader, that would have to be a guess on the reader’s part. Sometimes it’s a

collective ‘I.’” Diane Lockward, poet and mentor, remembers that a few years ago she reviewed a book that included a number of poems about breast cancer. It turned out that the poet never had breast cancer, though the “I” in the poems was utterly convincing. “To me,” Diane said, “that’s a tribute to the poet’s skill, that she was able to make readers believe her speaker.” Diane has had reviewers of her books confuse her with her speaker. They say, “‘Lockward is divorced,’ while in fact I’m married to the same man I married many years ago. And I was told that after reading my poem ‘My Husband Discovers Poetry,’ a group of women decided that I must be a mean-spirited person! My speaker might have been mean-spirited (and even there, I’d say the interpretation, the understanding, was flawed), but I’m sweet as pie!” Diane draws from the facts of her life, she says, but she always feels free to alter them, to invent them. “I no longer worry about being judged … I worry about making the poem as good as I can make it. It’s a craft. It’s art. It’s a work of imagination.” Clearly, some poets draw more heavily from their lives, their work more autobiographical. And if we are familiar with the life of the poet, perhaps we can be more certain about whether or not the author is speaking to us from his or her own personal experience. Joy Harjo (2012), acclaimed poet, performer, and writer of the Creek Nation, wrote a memoir, Crazy Brave, to show how extreme hardship growing up caused her to suppress her artistic gifts, bringing her to crisis. She speaks of the dreams, visions, and heartache that helped her find her voice as a poet and a musician.

SO WHO’S RIGHT ABOUT THE SPEAKER IN A POEM? It is generally agreed that the poem is a construction of the imagination, and poems can be just as fictional as other constructions. While a poet’s work is colored, even indelibly stamped, by life experience, even when the author creates a speaker who seemingly speaks for him or her, and may even use the word I, the poetic speaker in a poem is not necessarily the author of the poem. We can try to characterize the speaker of a poem (elderly person or teen? angry, lonely, frustrated?), but we can’t necessarily attribute aspects of the voice to that of the author or all of the details to the author’s life. Instead, and especially when working with students, we can call the voice of the poem the speaker, or the narrator, or the character. Ted Kooser (2005) likes to call the voice the presence. In an e-mail to me, poet Ellen Bass sums it up nicely. She says she often pictures herself standing half a step behind the speaker in her poems. The speaker is a woman in her sixties, living in the United States in the early part of the century, and she’s standing just slightly behind her, offering her the events of her life to make poetry out of. “Different schools of criticism think it is more or less valid to consider what we know of the poet. Some think that is completely irrelevant. And some think you can’t separate the poem from what we know about the poet. And sometimes people write poems that are very much fictional. So everybody is right!”

A FEW EXERCISES Behn, Robin, and Chase Twichell, eds. 1992. “Part 3. Who’s Talking and Why? The Self and Its Subjects.” In The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises from Poets Who Teach. New York: HarperCollins.

PART 3

FINDING POEMS, MAKING POEMS ANYBODY CAN WRITE A POEM I am arguing with an idiot online. He says anybody can write a poem. I say some people are afraid to speak. I say some people are ashamed to speak. If they said the pronoun “I” they would find themselves floating in the black Atlantic and a woman would swim by, completely dry, in a rose chiffon shirt, until the ashamed person says her name and the woman becomes wet and drowns and her face turns to flayed ragged pulp, white in the black water. He says that he’d still write even ifsomeone cut off both his hands. As if it were the hands that make a poem, I say. I say what if someone cut out whatever brain or gut or loin or heart that lets you say hey, over here, listen, I have something to tell you all, I’m different. As an example I mention my mother who loved that I write poems and am such a wonderful genius. And then I delete the comment because my mother wanted no part of this or any argument, because, “Who am I to say whatever?” Once on a grade school form

I entered her job as hairwasher. She saw the form and was embarrassed and mad. “You should have put receptionist.” But she didn’t change it. The last word she ever said was No. And now here she is in my poem, so proud of her idiot son, who presumes to speak for a woman who wants to tell him to shut up, but can’t. —BRADLEY PAUL (2010, 1–2) I HAVE COME INTO MY STRENGTH, AND WORDS OBEY MY CALL. —William Butler Yeats (1959, 90) When William Carlos Williams wrote, “It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there,” I think he meant that poetry can make our daily existence mean more to us (1967, 176). In Part 3, we are lifted up by the writing work of open and risk-taking teachers, by giving family members, by generous friends, and by inspired young people. All entering into that “silly, absurd, maddening, futile, enormously rewarding activity, writing poems. I don’t know why we do it. We must be crazy. Welcome, fellow poet” (Hugo 1979, xii).

DANCES WITH WORDS One fine day in May, I received an e-mail from my friend Susan. The subject line read: “I WANT A POEM!” The message: “Write me something, won’t you? The tulips from my window … bawdy, bold, blazing, brazen. Amazing.” My reply: “You already have one!” Susan’s words bounced with the life of those spring tulips. Words are what we have. What we need. What Robert Pirosh needed back in 1934 was a job. He arrived in Hollywood keen to be a screenwriter. In a letter he sent to directors, heads of studios, producers, he used all the words at his command to get their attention. Here is what he wrote: Dear Sir: I like words. I like fat buttery words, such as ooze, turpitude, glutinous, toady. I like solemn, angular, creaky words, such as straitlaced, cantankerous, pecunious, valedictory. I like spurious, black-is-white words, such as mortician, liquidate, tonsorial, demimonde. I like suave “V” words, such as Svengali, svelte, bravura, verve. I like crunchy, brittle, crackly words, such as splinter, grapple, jostle, crusty. I like sullen, crabbed, scowling words, such as skulk, glower, scabby, churl. I like Oh-Heavens, my-gracious, land’s-sake words, such as tricksy, tucker, genteel, horrid. I like elegant, flowery words, such as estivate, peregrinate, Elysium, halcyon. I like wormy, squirmy, mealy words, such as crawl, blubber, squeal, drip. I like sniggly, chuckling words, such as cowlick, gurgle, bubble and burp. I like the word screenwriter better than copywriter, so I decided to quit my job in a New York advertising agency and try my luck in Hollywood, but before taking the plunge I went to Europe for a year of study, contemplation and horsing around. I have just returned and I still like words. May I have a few with you? Robert Pirosh Robert’s approach worked. He took a job as a junior writer with MGM and later wrote for the Marx Brothers. In 1949, he won an Academy Award for his Battleground script. Tenth-grade teacher Jessica found Pirosh’s letter while researching something else on the Internet (http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/i-like-words.html). Being a word maven, she couldn’t wait to read this letter to her students. They read the words aloud, savored them. Riding the wave of their enthusiasm about Pirosh, Jessica asked her students to write a letter applying for a job as the class poet laureate for a week. This was not an “activity.” There would be poet laureates in her classroom. And they would know what one is and what one does.

Sammy pulled some words from Pirosh’s letter and wrote something like he had grappled with the idea, and decided to liquidate the practice of oozing fat buttery words in a list. Instead, he would put some crackly words together with some tricksy words and watch them squirm themselves into a glutinous burp. He included his original poem. Sammy was the class’s first poet laureate. He would be charged, as are our state and national laureates, with initiating an activity or project to engage people in poetry … his class, his school.

Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress • Established by an Act of Congress, 1985 • Raises nation’s awareness and appreciation of reading and writing poetry • Appointed by Librarian of Congress after consulting with other laureates, esteemed poets and critics, and staff at the Library’s Poetry and Literature Center • Serves from September to May; may serve two terms, longer by special request • Is paid a stipend from a gift by a private benefactor (Poets laureate in Great Britain, upon appointment, receive a “butt of sack” —600 bottles of sherry) • Has an office in the Poetry Room at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. • Initiates activities and projects to engage people, the nation, in poetry Read lots more about the Poet Laureate position at http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/poetslaureate/faq.html.

WORDPOOLS Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge (1996), in her book poemcrazy, writes about collecting words and creating a wordpool. She is a word collector. They are portable, she tells us. They are everywhere. And they are free. In the classroom Wooldridge chalks them wildly across the board and reads them with relish. She and her students find words, call them out, list them, toss them together in crazy “word salads” from field guides and repair manuals. From anywhere. They throw in some foreign words, some unique place-names. Words begin to cluster themselves into chunks of pure sound, into rhythmic lines. Some take off into poems of their own. “The rhythm, the music in the words, the circle of voices around the room, the associations … words next to words in new ways and the look of them spreading across and down the page takes us to the state of mind poems come from” (Wooldridge 1996, 11).

What We Can Learn from the Word Catchers • Set out to find words in the world fascinating • Walk, read, listen, start a wordpool in class • Roll words around in the mouth for sound • Collect words on the whiteboard, in notebooks, on charts • Weave these words into everyday conversation • Unpack individual words to make a poem • Make word “salads,” cluster them for associations to make poems

DOWN FOR THE WORD COUNT POETRY DELIGHTS IN THE UNEXPECTED, AND IS OUT TO REFRESH OUR EYES AND EARS. —Mark Doty (2010, 94) Poetry no longer lives just in textbooks in the classroom. It’s in pockets, on buses, in subway cars, on the Internet. World Poetry Day, for example, shares an anniversary with the service that became known as Twitter. The 140-character limit has spawned waves of creativity as folks test their ability to do more with less. Now there’s Twitterature, a book containing major works of literature boiled down into a bouillon cube (Aciman and Rensin 2009). There’s the twaiku movement, Twitter stories, and the New York Public Library’s National Poetry Contest on Twitter. This year, 400 people registered from 224 cities in 41 states. The heading at the website reads: “Little Poems / Big Thoughts / Tweet Yours.” (For more on this contest, see http://www.nypl.org/media-center/national-poetry-contest.) Here are two of the Twitter poem finalists, Leslie Kenna and Liesl Dineen. They e-mailed their stories to me. Leslie grew up in a New York City neighborhood that has an elevated train running through it. Later, she lived in San Francisco along a streetcar line. “For years,” she writes, “everything —eating, shopping, reading, sleeping, dental appointments, etc., was done to the beat of passing trains. I think all that shaking got into my bones.” BOUND in a waiting room under the el

each time a door closes the collection of mysteries and tragedies rattles and sways. —LESLIE KENNA (2013) Liesl explains that she and her husband came together with very few material things. About a year ago they splurged and bought some lovely matching plates, “but we never did get around to matching silverware.” One weekend morning, fetching spoons while the coffee brewed, “I looked at all our mismatched spoons, and forks and knives, and thought about how mismatched we are together, and I wondered about our future.” As she thought about some serious life issues, the sorrow started to flow in, and then her husband came booming inside with the dogs, and the kitchen was suddenly full of noise and this life—“this new, mismatched, crazy, beautifully rhythmic, full life. John, the dogs, our family, and my favorite spoon stirring in the cream of life.” Our mismatched spoons stir in the cream in staccato beats to match the clickety-clack of dogs in the kitchen. —LIESL DINEEN (2013)

Lest we think this is an activity for the obsessed techno-masses, four major prize-winning poets, two of them former laureates, published Twitter poems in the New York Times one year: Billy Collins, Claudia Rankine, Elizabeth Alexander, and Robert Pinsky (2011): http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/weekinreview/20twitterature-poems.html. Even more word retentive is Gotham Writers’ Workshop’s “A Very Short Story Contest.” The story goes, now considered a literary legend, that Ernest Hemingway accepted a challenge to write a story in fewer than ten words. He won by writing six: “For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.” There are variations of the story attributed to different people through the years. Nevertheless, the world of a story is contained within those words. I began to think of this concept as “A Very Short Poem Contest” as I looked at what Erel Pilo contributed to Gotham’s contest online (http://www.writingclasses.com/informationPages/index.php/PageID/894). Gotham made a bet with participants to write a great short story in ten words or fewer, counting the title if one is used. Erel researched examples on the Internet and studied the form to see what she thought worked best. Those she liked built in tension and had some kind of twist or surprise at the end. Sort of like a punch line in a joke.

In my favorite “five word poem” of Erel’s, the title sets us up from the beginning. We’re eager to find out what caused the “tantrum.” Not enough sweets to go around fills the bill. TANTRUM Eleven cupcakes. Twelve toddlers. —EREL PILO This poem demonstrates how much we bring to the meaning of what we read when words are specifically chosen and placed. There’s no one who cannot imagine a story, an image, from Erel’s words.

TRAMPLED BY TURTLES: SERENDIPITOUS POEMS INTELLECTUAL CONTROL OF A POEM IS SOMETHING TO APPLY AFTER THE MATERIALS HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO FLOAT TO THE SURFACE. —Sydney Lea (1992, 19) I was listening to Sound Check on WNYC (New York City’s public radio station). Trampled by Turtles, a popular Minnesota bluegrass band had stopped by to talk with the host about their group’s journey and their new album. Just the name of the band had me distracted from the olive oil cake I was making. I really perked up when a musician mentioned one of the songs, “Walt Whitman,” on their new album. He went on to describe how the band was experimenting with a new sound, and he was using a new technique to compose lyrics. Look through some books, pick twelve random words, and “make something of it.” Books. Twelve random words? Make something of it? I couldn’t wait to try this serendipitous technique for my next poem. But by what measure would I recognize the “chosen” words? What image or sound or thought in my mind would be the divining rod? Or would nothing guide me? Would I just sort of count off my tens? Or pick a jumble of one-, two, three-syllabled words? Or twelve pretty ones? Okay, stop. He said “random.” I was so accustomed to making associations from the beginning that “random” was truly intimidating. Where was the control? Seventh-grader Rosie showed me a way. With no theme in mind, she pulled one book out of her desk and two off a shelf in the classroom. Moving her finger across the pages like on a Ouija board, she stopped and recorded eight fairly strong words: victory, green, giant, lake, stripe, big, empty, red. Nothing came to mind right away for a poem. So she tried different strategies to connect words in meaning. First, she read the list out loud, hoping one word would grab another in recognition. Then

she clumped the words in different ways in her notebook trying for associations: “Giant lake,” “red giant,” “red striped,” “big victory,” “empty lake.” Maybe an environmental theme. The Red Tide? She also wrote each cluster of words in a column and jotted next to them what came to mind —an image, a memory, a thought. Her teacher suggested she talk it out with her writing partner. “Big victory,” she told her buddy, reminded her of the Giants game she went to with her dad. The Giants had won and she remembered her dad, a rabid fan, yelling, “Great victory, big guys! Great victory!” There, she had the place, the moment, the image. She jotted phrases trying to include the eight words she had chosen: “Giant stadium”; “great victory big guys”; “stripes on the field”; “green field”; “red, blue, confetti”; and so on. She tried writing about the game, the ups and downs, the point of victory. Too much. In conference with her teacher, she decided to scale back, keep the moment small, zoom in just after the victory, the feeling of elation. The random had been reined in. Here’s Rosie’s final poem: GIANT VICTORY The Giant stadium has emptied out. Oh, what a sight tonight. The striped field glints like sunshine on a green lake. Red, white and blue sprinkles all over my shoes, paint powder pretty. Great victory big guys! There are possibilities for poems all around us. Rosie shows us how to listen for words and, by association, shape them.

CONTROLLING THE WORDS I WANT TO TEMPER THEIR AWAKENING TO THE WORD, TO SHARPEN AND FOCUS THEIR BEAUTIFUL ENTHUSIASM. —Jeffrey Skinner (2012, 6) Poet Lloyd Schwartz (2006) shows us how a few words, put in an imagined context and

punctuated, can create and change meaning. In a poem called “Six Words,” Schwartz chose, not randomly, these six adverbs: yes, no, maybe, sometimes, always, and never. Except for the words in the seventh stanza in his poem, each word stands alone on a line. But by placing them in a certain order and punctuating them, he creates a dialogue of questions and responses. SIX WORDS yes no maybe sometimes always never Never? Yes. Always? No. Sometimes? Maybe— maybe never sometimes. Yes— no always: always maybe. No— never yes. Sometimes, sometimes (always)

yes. Maybe never… No, no— sometimes. Never. Always? Maybe. Yes— yes no maybe sometimes always never. —LLOYD SCHWARTZ (2006, 8–9) Learn more about Schwartz at http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/688. Students in Richard’s eighth-grade class took turns reading aloud Schwartz’s poem. Someone suggested they pair up and read it more like a dialogue. Finally, they thought they had satisfied the notation and their sense of how the dialogue might sound. Then Richard surprised them by going on YouTube to let them hear Schwartz reading his poem. That was the capper: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4U965wTp_c. Jamal, sufficiently intrigued by the possibility of breaking the record for brevity, decided to attempt a poem by manipulating only four words: say, what, you, and know. He chose them because “they’re already two things people say a lot—‘say what?’ and ‘you know.’” With Schwartz’s poem next to him for inspiration, he began to write. He moved punctuation marks around in different places, then practiced saying the words aloud until his voice obeyed the marks perfectly. With only four words to lean on, this was not easy. To repeat, it’s an incredible example of what readers bring to what they read. Here’s Jamal’s poem: SAY WHAT? YOU KNOW. Say. What? You know.

Say what? You know— say! Whaaaaaaat …! YOU know what! —What you say? Jamal shows us the power of words, carefully placed, to join with us in creating a meaningful context. Reader and words igniting.

THE BEST WORDS IN THE BEST PLACE: JEFF’S FANDANGO REDUX In Part 2, the section titled “Dealing with Difficulty,” we looked at Jeff’s “Reading a Great Poem.” (You might want to refer to that poem again before reading further.) Not only was he enamored of words, he wanted to write about what happens to him when he reads a poem he likes in the way Emily Dickinson described, “as if the top of my head were taken off” (in Johnson and Ward 1958, 474). Jeff chose metaphor to do that work. Simile would have worked, but not with the same energy or tone. How different if he had written, “Words are like a dust devil / roaring up from the loose sand … spinning me …” Not the same personality. Jeff tried to recall the way a great poem affects him. He made a list of images that might show what he would call such a poem: “A big secret in the center of my brain,” “a fast ball zooming across home plate,” “a tornado of words,” “an echo in the Grand Canyon,” “a wild native dance,” “lemonade on a summer day,” and so on. As he sketched next to each image, ideas began to bubble up. He selected a couple on the list that appealed to him most—for image, for feeling, for the way words were beginning to sound, for the itch he felt to keep going with it. From each of the selected short images, he wrote a longer image to see where each would lead. While working on the “tornado of words” image, he thought of recent devastating tornadoes in Oklahoma, and switched his mind to cast actions of a tornado in terms of how a poem might affect him—particles of poem brewing in the sky, the air grabbing the words, folding them up, rolling them over, a funnel of sound cutting a swath through his mind and heart, and so on. This poem had possibility. At the same time, Jeff shows us how, as writers, when we’re percolating with a poem, we begin to pay attention to things around us in a different way. Our senses and imagination are piqued. Still tuned in to the tornados, he heard about sections of the Midwest and South

experiencing a drought. Someone’s sighting of a “dust devil” caught his attention. “Dust devil.” Great alliteration. A “dust devil” doesn’t destroy like a tornado but creates a surprise, wild, momentary upheaval in nature one is not likely to forget, like the power of words to stir up his imagination. This was exactly the image, the tone, the sensation, Jeff was trying to make clear. Once Jeff found his metaphor for “Reading a Great Poem,” the words danced.

CONNECTING THE WORDS THE SIMPLE AND POWERFUL ACT OF CREATING A DEEP RELATIONSHIP WITH WORDS YOU LOVE CAN BE A MEDICINE—IGNITING HEALING AND AWAKENING IN YOU, AND THOSE AROUND YOU.

—Kim Rosen (2009, 19) Yuv, a student from Israel, in a variation on the twelve-word random search, perused a wildlife magazine dedicated to creatures whose habitats are threatened. This simplified the word selection process for him to some degree. He loved wildlife and nature, and was passionate about the plight of the pandas. Yuv wrote these words in his notebook: cut, mountain, climb, eat, trees, need, we, forests, help, time, gone, you. We see that he chose nouns, pronouns, and verbs that allow for basic English sentence structure. No the or and or or. They could be filled in. Seems he had a story behind the words already. Yuv worked between the magazine and his words, often talking to his friends about what was happening to the pandas in the mountains of central China. He copied out phrases from the article. His final poem is a dramatic monologue, sometimes called a persona poem. (See “Putting on the Mask: Persona Poems” later in Part 3 for more.) It gives a voice to the beleaguered panda, a plea that Yuv, too, wanted to make. A PANDA’S CRY We pandas need you before all the forests are gone! Help us! Each time you cut down a tree, our tears drip like dew in a mountain mist. Help us! Each time you cut down a tree, fewer trees to climb,

less bamboo to eat, a panda cries, another panda dies. Help us! Each time you cut down a tree, what message do you send, when will it end? Help us! We are weak. We are hungry. We are scared. Help us help us! Help us! The title and the first lines position us at the outset. The plaintive voice speaks directly to you. We can almost feel the stare of the panda into our eyes. The rhythm with a bit of rhyme —“what message do you / send, when will it end”—and—“a panda cries, / another panda dies”—ring like a song. Three lines repeat the words “We are” at the beginning. This device, called anaphora, gives this part of the poem a chant-like quality that brings the message home. Yuv performed his monologue at his school’s Earth Day celebration. He directed the audience in an interactive reading. When he gestured to them, they said the line “Help us!” building in momentum and energy, heightening the emotion. Starting with “We are weak,” he asked for a “call and response”—(Yuv) We are weak. (Audience) We are weak—for the rest of the poem. This vocal orchestration, a lone voice with a backup chorus ringing a chant in the air, was heartfelt and extremely moving. This is Robert Pinsky’s principle played out—“poetry is a vocal, which is to say a bodily, art … the artist’s medium is my breath. The reader’s breath and hearing embody the poet’s words” (1998, 8). (See also “The Music of It: Reading for Sound” and “Titles Leading Us into a Poem” in Part 2 and “Putting on the Mask: Persona Poems” later in Part 3.)

INSIDE THE WORDS A SENSITIVE READER PERCEIVES THIS RELATION OF POET TO WORD AND IN A WAY THAT RELATION—THE STRANGE WAY THE POET EMOTIONALLY POSSESSES HIS VOCABULARY— IS ONE OF THE MYSTERIES AND PRESERVATIVE FORCES OF THE ART. —Richard Hugo (1979, 14)

Petaluma (a lovely word) sometimes asks her students to find a word that “triggers” a memory, emotion, story, or image. Go inside that word, she asks them, and crack it open, like a nut, for rich possibilities that might come tumbling out. Inspired by Wooldridge’s (1996) book poemcrazy, Petaluma throws out some words and asks the “word catchers” to net as many as they like and write them in their notebooks: heart, blue, rain, smile, shadow, dream, forgive, name, dark, squirm, stormy, mad, invisible … As Wooldridge suggests, she sometimes clusters words by traits: colors, feelings, actions, sounds, opposites. Playing with these words, “making something of it,” they begin catching words of their own, unlocking them when they need a new poem. Emma, horse lover since second grade, “caught”—no surprise—horse. MY PRAYER I can feel her mane tickle me, a horse, a horse is the answer. Watch as she gallops there in the clover of my mind, a horse, a horse is the answer to my prayers. I can feel her mane. The Craft in “My Prayer”

When we notice what writers do that make their poems effective, the ways they move us, then we know what is valuable to teach. In Emma’s poem, for example, the repetition “a horse, / a horse is the answer” fills me with longing too. Not for a horse, but because we share that emotion of longing. In repeating the line, I feel a “galloping” sort of rhythm. The smallest detail —“mane / tickle me.” We feel it. The image in the speaker’s mind—“watch as she gallops / there / in the clover”—so tactile, so immediate. We see it too. Her lines end in strong nouns that give strength to her desire. A few vocal surprises: “I can feel her mane” spills over into “tickle me.” “Gallops” enjambs with “there”; “answer” enjambs with “to.” The white space before the last stanza slows down the galloping words. A very slight pause after “her,” then we make a small step further and come to rest on “mane.” For a moment after the last word I am still meditating on the tickle, the gallop, the answer to a prayer.

Write More with Less

• Write a Twitter poem, 140-character limit • Do a twelve-word random search and “make something of it” • Do a ten-word search within a topic of interest; add other words to make a poem • Write a poem of no more than ten words that tells a story • Write a six-word dialogue using punctuation for expression • Crack open a “trigger” word for memory, image, emotion, story. Make a poem.

MORE WORD WORK Doty, Mark. 2010. The Art of Description: World into Word. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf. Janeczko, Paul, ed. 2009. A Foot in the Mouth: Poems to Speak, Sing, and Shout. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick. Livingston, Myra Cohn, ed. 1995. Call Down the Moon: Poems of Music. New York: Margaret K. McElderry Books. Malvasi, Christine, ed. 2012. Challenges for the Delusional: Peter Murphy’s Prompts and the Poems They Inspired. New York: Jane Street Press. Moyers, Bill. 1999. Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft. New York: William Morrow. Pinsky, Robert. 1998. The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

POEMS WAITING TO BE FOUND THOSE HAPPY POETS WHO WRITE FOUND POETRY GO PAWING THROUGH POPULAR CULTURE LIKE SCULPTORS ON TRASH HEAPS. THEY HOLD AND WAVE ALOFT USABLE ARTIFACTS AND FRAGMENTS: JINGLES AND AD COPY, MENUS AND BROADCASTS— —Annie Dillard (1995, ix)

The idea of “found” poems is not new. Some say the concept originated with twentieth-century Dadaists, who extended their art of collage, for example, to include items such as transportation tickets, maps, plastic wrappers, and so on. They sought to portray aspects of life rather than represent objects as still life. The practice of found poetry is the literary equivalent, giving lines new meaning in a new context.

FINDING POEMS IN UNEXPECTED PLACES I WILL … SAY THAT FOUND POETRY IS WORTHWHILE, THAT WE NEED POETS WILLING TO REMIND US OF WHAT WE ALREADY HAVE. —Aaron Stein (2013) Awareness of the everyday as a place for found poems is key. Once you hear some lines from, say, the letters of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, or the instructions for assembling a whirligig as possibilities for poems, you’re on your way. People are finding lines in unexpected places—in letters and on street signs, in lectures and speeches, in articles and announcements, in comics and etiquette guides, even in existing poems (in the case of a cento)—and refashioning them as poems. Online blog posts describe fascinating found poem experiences. Patrice, for example, noticed a line in the carriage of the Paris Metro, “A sonorous signal announces the closure of doors.” She thinks the English translation reads better than the French. Benny wrote a poem from suggested recipes for the Ultimate Banana Daiquiri. Bill reminds us of a whole book of poems from the broadcast musings of Phil Rizzuto, sports announcer and former shortstop for the New York Yankees. Danika has written a collection of poems from comments on YouTube. Randy wrote poems from articles about Hurricane Sandy. He sent one to each of his relatives who lost property on the Jersey Shore. Robert Phillips found poems in the letters of people we recognize. Here are two from letters by Emily Dickinson and Vincent Van Gogh, reprinted on The Writer’s Almanac with

Garrison Keillor. I. (FROM A LETTER BY EMILY DICKINSON) When you wrote you would come in November it would please me it was November then—but the time has moved. You went with the coming of the birds—they will go with your coming, but to see you is so much sweeter than birds, I could excuse the spring … Will you come in November, and will November come, or is this the hope that opens and shuts like the eyes of the wax doll? —ROBERT PHILLIPS (2007)

IV. (FROM A LETTER BY VINCENT VAN GOGH) I think that I still have it in my heart someday to paint a bookshop with the front yellow and pink, in the evening, and the black passerby like a light in the midst of darkness. —ROBERT PHILLIPS (2007)

I had a personal experience with found poems one Valentine’s Day, when a friend sent me an invitation after reading an announcement in the New York Times, February 9, 2013, “Love and the 7:04 to White Plains.” Dear Shirl, The Transit Museum is celebrating Valentine’s Day at Grand Central Terminal. Alan Feuer will be reading from his “Missed Connections” poetry “found” in the Personals section of newyork.craigslist.org. Shall we go?

MAKING A “GOOD” FOUND POEM I GEEK ON POETRY IN UNEXPECTED PLACES. EVEN MORE, I LOVE POETRY THAT WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO BE POETRY. SUDDENLY: OOPS, YOU’RE A WRITER. —J. K. Evanczuk (2011, 2) Well, not so fast. Finding words and lines that have possibilities for poems is one thing. What to do with them is another. Poets spend years honing their craft. It’s serious business. So some might bristle to hear that folks think they can just “find” some lines on a bottle of olive oil, and voila! Granted, not all found poems are created equal. Not all found constructions work well as poems. And readers’ tastes run the gamut. But finding lines and crafting these types of poems can be liberating and fun. When feeling strapped for an idea, or stuck on a poem of our own, we can take a break and use someone else’s words and still feel creative as we try to arrange and order them to represent some kind of new truth. We can still practice the craft of making a poem and yield something honest, artful, even moving. We might transform what is found using a traditional form, such as a sonnet or villanelle, or write in free verse, making decisions about line endings, spaces, stanzas, and so on.

A MATTER OF FORM WITH A GOOD SCRIPT A GOOD DIRECTOR CAN PRODUCE A MASTERPIECE; WITH THE SAME SCRIPT A MEDIOCRE DIRECTOR CAN MAKE A PASSABLE FILM. BUT WITH A BAD SCRIPT EVEN A GOOD DIRECTOR CAN’T POSSIBLY MAKE A GOOD FILM. —Akira Kurosawa (1983, 193)

Hart Seely found a fantastic script. He scoured official Defense Department transcripts of news briefings and speeches by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. He took the best

nuggets from Rumsfeld’s “verbosity” and turned them into art. His poems, published as “The Poetry of D. H. Rumsfeld,” first appeared in Slate in 2003, and readers shivered with recognition and newfound truth. The original words in their time were described as “overblown,” “rambling,” “mystifying,” the points often getting scrambled in the “verbiage.” Or a “brilliant distillation.” No doubt you will recall these words from a February 12, 2002, press briefing addressing the lack of evidence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction: “There are known knowns … there are known unknowns … there are things we do not know we don’t know.” Now, to see this titillating script in the hands of a good “director,” read Seely’s found poem online: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/low_concept/2003/04/the_poetry_of_dh_rumsfeld.h What a difference a form makes. Shaped for maximum emphasis, the poem has exactly the right tone.

FOUND POEMS IN THE EVERYDAY YES, POETRY HOLDS THAT SORT OF MAGIC—THE MYSTERIOUS ABILITY TO SAY ONE THING WHILE REACHING FOR ANOTHER. —Drew Myron (2012)

Drew Myron, poet and former newspaper reporter and editor, “found” a whole text “lifted from my medicine bottle and reformed—with line breaks providing places to pause.” Usually, she lifts and rearranges, or sometimes saves words by erasing others from a text. “But on rare days a poem is whole-cloth, sitting on my bathroom sink” (Myron 2012). That’s where she found this poem. INSTRUCTIONS, EXACTLY Take this medicine on an empty stomach preferably half to one hour before breakfast. Take this medicine with a full glass of water. Take this medication at least four hours before

taking antacids, iron or vitamins or minerals or supplements. Take or use this medicine exactly as directed. Do not skip doses or discontinue unless directed by your doctor. Take this medicine exactly as directed. Do not skip doses. —DREW MYRON (2012)

THE FOUND POETRY REVIEW IN A FOUND POEM, THE BODY OF THE WORK WAS ALREADY OURS (BECAUSE VISIBLE SOMEWHERE), AND THE POETS SIMPLY MAKE US SEE IT. —Aaron Stein (2013) Jenni B. Baker and her friends in graduate school arranged an online poetry-writing group. They posted and responded to a prompt each week. One week they challenged themselves to write a poem using words found on product packaging. Not having much faith in the idea, Jenni reached for a product at hand—teeth-whitening strips—and copied down all the words. She did it in half an hour, and it was fun. Since then she has used this strategy as an exercise when struggling with an idea, “a way to unclog the creative pipes.” Eventually, she began practicing “crafting poems from speeches, menus, Twitter streams and more” (Baker 2012). By 2011, Jenni had become an active devotee. So she founded The Found Poetry Review (http://www.foundpoetryreview.com/), a biannual literary journal, to showcase poets finding poems in their everyday lives and to encourage others to try.

PLAYBILL AND OTHER FOUND POEMS IN THE EVERYDAY

BY ENTERING A FOUND TEXT AS A POEM, THE POET DOUBLES ITS CONTEXT. —Annie Dillard (1995, ix)

Following is a collection of poems students have found from everyday sources. The lines they found have been left wholly intact. Nothing added. They have provided a context for their poems. And each source has been attributed, as we think it should be. When you read these poems, imagine the poetic eye sharp enough to recognize selected print as a source for a poem. Imagine the mind composed enough to separate out words and lines around a single idea or image or event or experience. Imagine the ear receptive enough to hear and select words and lines that sound so right in their arranged places. Imagine the poetic knowledge required to find a beginning line, to end-stop or enjamb those lines, to break the stanzas, to land in a strong place. These are some of the skills all poets need. Even “found” poets. James: A found poem from the book The Most Beautiful Place in the World by Ann Cameron. I remember the peacocks on the lawn, thousands of stars in the sky— my town. But back against the wall, telling a good story, I ran out of signs. I cant go there again. Nathan: A found poem from a “Public Service Electric & Gas” monthly statement. PUBLIC SERVICE This is the charge for delivering.

This is the charge for balancing for transporting. This is the charge for generating. This is the charge for commodity, for Worry Free. This is the charge for the balance of those, energy strong, who do not choose. William: A found poem from the playbill of Kinky Boots on Broadway. PLAY BILL Welcome to the vault. Something wicked this way comes. Kinky Boots, Viva glam! Bank your Broadway memories, unlock the last five years. It’s about taking you on a journey, beyond your four walls, beyond a new town.

Yoko: A found poem from the book Secrets of a Wildlife Watcher by Jim Arnosky WILDLIFE WATCHER Finding signs, nightcalls Stalking senses, blinds, how close is too close? Watching from a hiding place grooming, posturing warning Secrets take them afield use them.

BETWEEN TWO POLES Though I once worked closely with Samay, years have passed, and all I have left of him is a page copied out of a notebook, first name at the top, and a poem. What I see here, however, is that Samay has read, or has had read to him, Hester Bass’s inspired and prize-winning book, The Secret World of Walter Anderson (2009). Obviously, the passion and magic of Anderson’s art and life, the lyricism of Bass’s lines, and most assuredly the wonder of E. B. Lewis’s illustrations, resonated with Samay. Using a text that is already lyrical is extremely supportive for someone trying to fashion a found poem. And perhaps for someone for whom English is a second language. But it can be tricky. With original lines that are poetic in sound and rhythm, it can be difficult for the poet to detach from the original work to fashion something quite new. But what is most amazing here is the student’s ability to capture Anderson’s passion and artistry in a nutshell. WALTER ANDERSON, MAD GENIUS There once was a man—his love of nature wide as the world—rowed

every stroke to where sea meets the earth and sky, to paint in paradise, where life had never been easy. Sun and wind and his shadow kept him company, cricket song hung in the air. He would paint the symphony of nature, the last magic hour before sunset, as the colors of the world melted into darkness, to bring himself and nature into one. —SAMAY To write this found poem requires having a sense of what is essential to the heart of the poem. It requires reading and rereading to select precise lines, from many, that illustrate or deepen the essential thought. Then there’s the skill of shaping those lines—their endings, the stanzas, the white space—for sound, for rhythm, for impact.

PIECING TOGETHER THE LINES: A CENTO “Cento” means “patchwork” in Latin and is sometimes thought of as a “collage” poem. It is made by piecing together lines of verse from the works of different poets and assembling them to make something entirely new. Usually a cento will use no more than one line from each poem. Sources are cited at the end of the poem. Making a whole new creation and the citations are what keep the cento from being just an act of taking someone else’s words and calling them your own. Susan Gubar in the New York Times, for example, writes in the “Well” section about living with ovarian cancer. She was inspired by books she was reading about coping with a lifethreatening illness. Being a quilter, she understood the value of carefully chosen pieces, of piecing things together to make a work of art. She chose lines from her reading “to convey the chaos of feeling that all of us can share” (2013). Read her poem here: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/living-with-cancer-a-quilt-of-poetry/?_r=0. The staff of the Academy of American Poets website shows how they composed a cento using a line each from Marie Ponsot, Emily Dickinson, Charles Wright, Sylvia Plath, and

Samuel Beckett: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prm-MID/5771. And Maureen McLane, in her book My Poets writes, “My Poets 1: An Interlude in the Form of a Cento.” It uses sixty-five citations. No mean feat. Here is a small excerpt: LINES FROM “MY POETS 1,” A CENTO IN MY POETS Something hangs in back of me.7 Feelings: / oh, I have those; they / govern me,8 carve into me with knives of light.9 My gen ial spirits fail.10 7. Denise Levertov, “The Wings.” 8. Gluck, “The Red Poppy.” 9. Carson, “The Glass Essay.” 10. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Dejection: An Ode.” —MAUREEN MCLANE (2012, 186) Finally, creating a cento is about arranging lines in a particular sequence that express feelings and create new images. It can’t be done willy-nilly. In the end we would want what we always want. A good poem. A new creation that has the power to delight and move us in the way any good poem can.

AS THE POEM FINDS ITS WAY TO PAPER We have read about all the unexpected places people are finding the makings for poems. We’ve read some incredible poems from found lines. We’ve looked up close at the inside and the outside of one or two. As students and teachers get started writing their own found poems (and people have different ways of working), here are a few things to consider. Jenni B. Baker’s breakdown of the types of submissions she receives for the Found Poetry Review online, and what she tends to accept as quality, can be instructive. She describes “three broad buckets” (2012). How Jenni B. Baker Assesses Found Poems for Quality

1. Reportage: A problem. Excerpted, sequential lines from a text, with added line breaks and spaces. “Singling out a pithy paragraph in Lolita, pressing the return key a few times and calling it a found poem doesn’t do much for me on the editorial front—it is not surprising or inventive.”

2. Distillation: Can work. Words and phrases from a text rearranged so the message is the same but the lines are arranged in a different way. Baker looks for “originality in arrangement.” 3. Reinvention: Works well. Words and phrases from a text arranged so that “the poem’s meaning has little or nothing to do with that of the source material.” It answers these questions: “What can you add to the source material? What new story can you find within the original?” Some Tips for Crafting a Found Poem

There is no one way of working, no fixed order in the doing. Dive in. Have fun. • Your source is any text that’s not already a poem (with the exception of a cento). • As you read source material you might underline or highlight lines or phrases that speak to you, that you like the sound of. Maybe you have a theme or a mood or an image in mind as you’re reading and find yourself jotting around those. • Jot the phrases and sentences on a notebook page or in a word processing document. Or cut them out and arrange them on a table. Short lines probably will work better. Arrange them by common characteristics or theme or sound or grammatical units. • If using pages from a book, an e-book can be helpful. That way you can have the page next to your writing space. • Begin to write your poem. Some use found sentences and phrases to write a narrative first, not thinking about it as a poem. Then reread to make it more like a poem in sound and shape. Or you might find a good first line, and let that line push you soundwise, sensewise, and rhythmically to the next line and the next. Lines and phrases can be repeated too. Some people like to group their lines and phrases in various ways: good beginnings, description, actions, speaking to the reader, repetition, statements or commands, great landing pads (endings), and so on. • Revise. And revise again. Now you’re thinking “poem.” You might have a few poems you like next to you as you work, including some found poems from this text, or Dillard’s (1995). • Put your poem away for a day or two. When you come back, you might be able to make an idea or image clearer, or put a wayward line in just the right place. Perhaps you will insert other found material or put in one or two of your own words (contests sometimes allow one or two). Or you may want to stick with the “purity” of the found lines. • Pay special attention to line endings and spacing. A change in a line ending can change the meaning from the original, can bring a freshness of sound and rhythm. Where lines end and where they move into stanza breaks can signal thoughtfulness, meditation, or anticipation or drama.

• Read your poem out loud. Again. To yourself. To a kind person. When your voice follows your notation, does it sound right? Does it feel right? Does thought move from the first line and push its way forward? Do you land at the end? • You might experiment by writing several different poems using the same lines and phrases. Bet you’ll never see the words on your hand sanitizer the same way again.

FILLING UP ON FOUND POETRY Dillard, Annie. 1995. Mornings Like This: Found Poems. NY: HarperCollins. Dunning, Stephen, and William Stafford. 1992. “Found and Headline Poems.” In Getting the Knack: 20 Poetry Writing Exercises. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Feuer, Alan. 2009. “Near but Far, and Perhaps Unattainable.” New York Times, July 31. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/nyregion/02poetry.html. (Found poems from Craigslist by Alan Feuer in the New York Times. Feuer has gone on to “find” poems in the listings from Occupy Wall Street and beyond.”) Gubar, Susan. 2013. “Living with Cancer: A Quilt of Poetry (a cento).” New York Times, July 25. McLane, Maureen N. 2012. “My Poets, 1: An Interlude in the Form of a Cento.” In My Poets. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. New York Times. 2013. “Found Poem Student Challenge.” The Learning Network. http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/category/found-poem-student-challenge/. (Challenge posed every year in April. Go to the site to read each year’s guidelines for entering and to see winners.) Phillips, Robert. 2003. “Found Poems.” In Spinach Days. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ——. 2013. “Poems by Robert Phillips: Found Poems.” The Writer’s Almanac. http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2007/09/13.

Seely, Hart. 2003. “The Poetry of D. H. Rumsfeld: Recent Works by the Secretary of Defense.” Slate. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/low_concept/2003/04/the_poetry_of_dh_rumsfel ——. 2010. “Tea Party Poems: The Found Poetry of Sarah Palin.” Slate. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/low_concept/2010/05/tea_party_poems.html Online Journals for Reading and Submitting Found Poems Found Poetry Review. 2013. http://www.foundpoetryreview.com/. (Read, submit, share poems.)

Rogue Poetry Review. 2013. http://roguepoetryreview.com/found-poetry/. (Unique poetry forms.) Verbatim Poetry: Poetry from the Ordinary. 2013. http://verbatimpoetry.blogspot.com/. (Poetry found in ordinary places. Read, submit, share poems.) Books of Unique Found Poetry Bervin, Jen. 2010. Nets. Brooklyn, NY: Ugly Duckling Press. (Selected words and phrases from sixty of Shakespeare’s sonnets. The blackened words emerge, in their places, among the faded background of the rest of the sonnet. The book’s website is http://www.jenbervin.com/html/nets.html.) Johnson, Ronald. 2005. Radi os. Chicago: Flood Editions. (Radi os revises the first four books of Paradise Lost by excising words, discovering a modern and visionary poem within the seventeenth-century text. This URL takes you to an article that discusses Johnson’s work: http://www.denverquarterly.com/upload/images/Anderson40_4.pdf.) Kleon, Austin. 2010. Newspaper Blackout. New York: HarperPerennial. (Poet and cartoonist Austin Kleon, armed with a daily newspaper and a permanent marker, eliminates the words he doesn’t need to create a new art form: newspaper blackout poetry. See examples on his website: http://austinkleon.com/category/newspaper-blackout-poems/.) McDonald, Travis. 2008. The O Mission Repo. Philadelphia: Fact-Simile. (An erasure project that reworks The 9/11 Commission Report. Demonstrates how poetry can reside, or hide, within the most utilitarian of language, inside the most public of documents. An article by McDonald about erasures is at http://jacketmagazine.com/38/macdonald-erasure.shtml.) Ruefle, Mary. 2006. A Little White Shadow. New York: Wave Books. (Ruefle crafts what she calls “erasures,” found texts from which she has crossed out almost all the words, leaving only a tiny poem’s worth per page. See her bio page at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/mary-ruefle.) Found Poems for Mature Enlightenment and Delight Fitterman, Robert. 2009. “National Laureate.” Poets.org. http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/22102. (Creates a composite American Poet Laureate based on lines from every state laureate, of states that have them.) Goldsmith, Kenneth. 2003. Day. Great Barrington, MA: Figures. (Goldsmith retyped the entire New York Times for Friday, September 1, 2000, as is, every page, every ad, every column. This site shows two sample poems from Goldsmith’s book, Day: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/237062.) Place, Vanessa. 2011. “Miss Scarlett.” Poets.org. http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/22106. (Place phonetically transcribes the

character Prissy’s words in the famous scene in the movie, Gone with the Wind. Set in Miltonic couplets, the poem brings out embedded subtexts “concerning power plays, gender, race, and authorship.”)

LINE BY LINE ONE LINE OF A POEM, THE POET SAID—ONLY ONE LINE, BUT THANK GOD FOR THAT ONE LINE—DROPS FROM THE CEILING … AND YOU TAP IN THE OTHERS AROUND IT WITH A JEWELER’S HAMMER. —Annie Dillard (1989, 77–78)

Sometimes we say how much we love a single word from a poem—E. E. Cummings’s mudluscious world in spring, or the frumious Bandersnatch in Carroll’s “Jabberwocky.” But single words aren’t what make us love and hold onto a poem. It’s the associations of the words within the lines. And, of course, the imprint of these associations on our lifelines. My friend Carol Kellogg once said to me, “I can’t hear or read or even think about Housman’s (1896) poem—‘Loveliest of trees the cherry now / Is hung with bloom along the bough’—without being thrust upon the verge of tears.” Former teacher Barbara Caldwell recites lines as she goes about her daily life. “Wordsworth’s words echo my love for wildflowers and all simple, beautiful wild things —‘To me, the meanest flower that blows can give / Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.’” (1994). As for me, I am haunted by lines from Yeats’s (2013) “The Lake Isle of In-nisfree”: “I will arise and go now / and go to Innisfree … And live alone in the bee-loud glade.” Words that ripple like water over rocks in an early spring stream. An image made for longing. Part of the mystery of the power of poems, then, is in the craftsmanship. That, and the moment when the sounds of words carefully chosen and set in lines meet the sounds coming from our hearts. That connection.

THE POETIC LINE More than in any other type of writing, line is what we experience when we read a poem. In his book The Art of the Poetic Line, Longenbach acknowledges that the line is difficult to talk about, much more so than other elements of poetry. This is true, he says, because no two lines function in exactly the same way. “The power of lineation arises from the relationship between the lines and the syntax (sentence structure) of a particular poem … If we want to hear the work of the line, we need to read poems by someone whose lines work for us” (2008, xi). The Title as Line

THE TITLE AND THE FIRST FEW LINES OF YOUR POEM REPRESENT THE HAND YOU EXTEND IN FRIENDSHIP TOWARD YOUR READER. —Ted Kooser (2005, 25)

In many ways, the title is the first line of the poem, the line that welcomes us in. In some cases the title is, literally, the first word or line. When does a writer decide on the title? And how? These are questions I am sometimes asked. Some people keep a list of ideas for titles in their notebooks and peruse them when writing a poem: a song title, a question, a quirky fact, a headline, a saying or quote. Other poets hold off choosing a title until they see and hear what they write. For me, a title has to serve the rest of the poem. Sometimes I have a title and I use that as a springboard for writing. Mostly, though, I don’t know what the title will be before I get into the poem and discover what for me is the truth of it. Sometimes it turns out that the first line would be perfect for the title. Sometimes a detail or bit of information that doesn’t seem right for the poem might, as the title, help the reader. Sometimes I am doing something entirely different— reading a book, making a salad—and a title just leaps out at me. I know it’s because when I’m working on a poem it’s always with me, even when I’m not consciously writing. That title didn’t just leap out of the blue. How would it know what the conversation was? Finally, as readers we know how critical the poem’s title is to helping us through the turnstile of a poem. So, whatever lends a hand of friendship to the reader must be of serious concern to the writer.

Titles at Work The title serves the intent of the poet and the poem. You might create a title that serves the following purposes: • Gives readers background information • Is the first word or line of the poem • Contains the form of the poem (but makes it intriguing) • Contains details that might be helpful to the reader but don’t necessarily fit in the poem • Locates the poem—situates us in time, in place • Adds mystery or sparks curiosity

The End of the Line POETRY IS THE SOUND OF LANGUAGE ORGANIZED IN LINES. —James Longenbach (2008, xi)

It’s interesting to note that Longenbach prefers the term line ending instead of line break. He believes line break is “an inaccurate metaphor” because “at the point where the line ends, syntax may or may not be broken, continuing in the next line” (2008, xii). However, whether we call it a line break or line ending, many beginners have difficulty deciding where to end a line, and so end it arbitrarily. Like prose chopped up to look more like a poem. And yet, how a reader moves through a poem, with what pace and tone, has much to do with how a line ends.

ELLEN BASS’S POEM-LINE BY LINE Much of what we need to know about line endings is there, in the line endings, when we hear other poets’ work; when we read it and look at what they have crafted; when we hear the music of the line and feel its rhythm; when we read the line and feel the effect that a line ending—and that rest period right after—has on us. Let’s eavesdrop on loved poet Ellen Bass as she thinks about “Mighty Strong Poems” from Mules of Love (2002), a poem that she dedicated to Billy Collins. Once, she showed a book of her poems to Collins and he wrote in it, “Mighty Strong Poems.” (Notice where Bass’s title comes from.) Here’s some of what Ellen wrote in an e-mail to me. This may seem lengthy to look at, but do read this carefully because it is a workshop in line endings, right here. And it’s a guide for looking at line endings in any poem. Deciding how best to end each line of a poem is more challenging, I think, than it would seem to be. In part, this is because there are so many effects that line breaks can achieve. Line breaks can cue pauses in breath as you read the poem. They can indicate slight—or large—shifts in thought or feeling. They can speed the poem up or slow it down. If you break the line where the phrase or sentence would normally end, that’s called end-stopping. If you end the line somewhere else— breaking up the natural unit of phrase, clause, or sentence—that’s called enjambment (a French word that means “straddling”). The last word in a line has special importance because it tends to linger in the reader’s mind the way the end of a sentence or a poem tends to stay with us. The first word in a line also has a bit more emphasis. Ultimately line breaks are a part

of the rhythm or music of the poem. Using my work, “Mighty Strong Poems,” I’m going to point out just a few of the effects I hope the line endings achieve. MIGHTY STRONG POEMS for Billy Collins “What mighty strong poems,” he said. And I repeat it all day, staggering under sheaves of rejections. But my poems, oh yes, they are brawny. Even now I can see them working out at the gym in their tiny leopard leotards, their muscly words glazed with sweat. They are bench pressing heavy symbolism. Heaving stacks of similes, wide-stanced and grimacing. Some try so hard, though it’s a lost cause. Their wrinkled syntax, no matter how many reps they do, will sag. But doggedly, they jog in iambic pentameter, walkmans bouncing. Some glisten with clever enjambments, end rhymes tight as green plums. Others practice caesuras in old sweats. But they’re all there, huffing and puffing, trying their best. Even the babies, the tender first-drafts, struggling just to turn over, whimpering in frustration. None of them give up. Not the short squat little haikus or the alexandrines trailing their long, graceful Isadora Duncan lines. While I fidget by the mailbox, they sail off in paper airplanes, brave as kindergartners boarding the school bus. They’re undaunted in their innocent conviction, their heartbreaking hope. They want to lift cars off pinned children, rescue lost and frozen wanderers—they’d bound out, little whiskey barrels strapped to their necks.

They dream of shrugging off their satin warm-up robes and wrestling with evil. They’d hoist the sack of ordinary days and bear it aloft like a crown. They believe they’re needed. Even at night when I sleep and it looks like they’re sleeping, they’re still at it, lying silently on the white page, doing isometrics in the dark. —ELLEN BASS (2002, 65)

Ellen’s Commentary on Effects of Her Line Endings

“What mighty strong poems,” he said. And I repeat it all day, staggering under sheaves of rejections. But my poems, oh yes, they are brawny. Looking at these first four lines, you see three examples of end-stopping and one of enjambment. The first line is a simple end-stopped line and establishes the words of Billy Collins clearly. Ending with a period gives the reader time to let the dedication and the quote from Billy Collins sink in. But in the next line, instead of ending at day (which would be a natural endstopped line), I end at staggering (enjambment). This gives a moment for the reader to see me physically, literally, staggering before going onto the next line which reveals staggering to be a metaphor for how it feels to get so many rejections when I send out my poetry. The next two lines are end-stopped with periods. A good rule of thumb is that if there’s nothing special to be gained by enjambment, then end-stop the line. Go for the natural breaks unless you have a good reason not to. Similarly, I broke the line, “They are bench pressing / heavy symbolism …” at bench pressing because I wanted the reader to see the actual image of someone bench pressing for a second before it’s revealed that it’s “heavy symbolism” that they’re working so hard to lift.

I chose the line breaks in the following lines to reflect the content in the lines: But doggedly, they jog in iambic pentameter, walkmans bouncing. Some glisten with clever enjambments, end rhymes tight as green plums. Iambic pentameter, as you may know, is a common meter both for poetry and for our natural speech. It goes: da DUM, da DUM, da DUM, da DUM, da DUM. I would have liked to make the first line a perfect iambic pentameter line to match the meaning, but the words “iambic pentameter” don’t fit that rhythm very well at all! So instead I settled for starting the line out in an iambic meter. If you scan (or count out the stressed and unstressed syllables) the rhythm of “But doggedly, they jog …” it would sound like this: But DOG ed LY they JOG. So although not many readers are going to actually count out the syllables, we all have absorbed these rhythms deeply from listening and talking all our lives and, below our conscious awareness, we register them. In the next line I end on “clever,” creating an enjambment because that’s what the line is talking about. And I end-stop the following line on those “tight green plums” because I’m talking about end rhymes. Again, had I been able, it would have been cool to rhyme those lines as well. I was tempted to try to demonstrate all the poetic terms as I wrote the lines, but although that would have been a lot of fun, I wasn’t able to do it in a way that kept the natural, conversational style of the poem. And I didn’t want to sacrifice the image of those end rhymes tight as green plums that make you see those tight rear ends on the treadmill or the stairmaster! I did sneak the end rhymes “pentameter” and “clever” just above though. I’ll skip now down to the end of the poem: They’d hoist the sack of ordinary days and bear it aloft like a crown. They believe they’re needed. Even at night when I sleep and it looks like they’re sleeping, they’re still at it, lying silently on the white page, doing isometrics in the dark. Here, I break the second line in this section at “believe” to emphasize the idea of what we believe and what we put our faith in. I also create a slant-rhyme (or almost rhyme) with “believe” and “sleep” since both words have a long “e” sound. But this line also illustrates another aspect of line endings. By deciding where to end the line, you’re also deciding what the line should consist of. Poems are made of lines, and each line, ideally, has its own integrity.

I could have ended at “crown” and made the next line: “They believe they’re needed” and this would be sensible and orderly. But the line—and bear it aloft like a crown. They believe—is a little more mysterious, more resonant. It couples the idea of bearing ordinary days aloft like a crown with belief. And that, of course, is where the poem is taking us. The poems believe it’s possible to make, of our ordinary days, something extraordinary, something royal and worthy of being crowned. Wow. Ellen, thank you for the exercise.

DIANE LOCKWARD’S POEM–CONTENT AND FORM Diane Lockward, master of word and image, graciously shares her thoughts about how she came to write the poem “Blueberry” from What Feeds Us (2006), how she wove the content and the packaging of her poem. In her story, a line started it all. I began “Blueberry” after having a fruit salad for lunch. But I couldn’t get beyond simple description of the fruit. The poem didn’t seem to have any reason for living, so I put it away and ignored it for months. Then one day I started thinking about my mother’s fondness for blueberry pancakes. The words “favorite fruit of my mother” arrived and the poem took off from there. I’d discovered my real subject. Now we can read “Blueberry” with Ellen Bass’s tutorial ringing in our ears, perking up our observations. BLUEBERRY Deep-blue hue of the body, silvery bloom on its skin. Undersized runt of a fruit, like something that failed to thrive, dented top a fontanel. Lopsided globe. A temperate zone. Tiny paradox, tart and sweet, homely but elegant afloat in sugar and cream, baked in a pie, a cobbler, a muffin. The power of blue. Number one antioxidant fruit, bantam-weight champ in the fight against urinary tract infections, best supporting actor in a fruit salad. No peeling, coring or cutting.

Lay them out on a counter, strands of blue pearls. Pop one at a time, like M&M’s, into your mouth. Be a glutton and stuff in a handful, your tongue, lips, chin dyed blue, as if feasting on indigo. Fruit of the state of New Jersey. Favorite fruit of my mother. Sundays she scooped them into pancake batter, poured circles onto the hot greased griddle, sizzled them gold and blue, doused with maple syrup. This is what I want to remember: my mother and me, our quilted robes, hair in curlers, that kitchen, that table, plates stacked with pancakes, blueberries sparkling like gemstones, blue stars in a gold sky, the universe in reverse, the two of us eating blueberry pancakes. —DIANE LOCKWARD (2006, 23)

When I had a finished draft (not a finished poem), I thought the first part, the descriptive part, needed some pizzazz, so I brainstormed a list of metaphors. I also did a Google search on “blueberry” to do the kind of research I often do. I was on the hunt for new diction, a useful odd bit or two of information (e.g., number one antioxidant fruit, urinary tract infections), and some images. The form of the poem evolved rather naturally. Some poems call for unconventional line breaks to create tension, surprise, and/or a fast pace. But for this poem of reminiscence, I wanted more logical breaks and a slower pace. I therefore ended each line with a strong word or syllable. This calls for a slight pause before moving to the next line, just as there is a slight pause after a bell rings and before it rings again. The poem began with two parts—the description of the blueberry and the memory of the mother—with the line “Favorite fruit of my mother” marking a clear turn in the poem. I then divided each part into two parts, ending with four stanzas.

There’s a progression from one stanza to the next. Each stanza is a narrowing down. A break separates the descriptive stanza 1 from the more praise-laden stanza 2. The broad memory of stanza 3 is followed by the more detailed memory of stanza 4. This all makes sense now, but don’t think that these line breaks and stanza breaks always come this easily; they don’t. I typically wrestle with them for weeks, often ending with several different format versions. I read each one aloud and tape record myself. When I get it right, it feels and sounds right. Thanks, Diane, for a master class and a fond memory. Readers might want to hear Garrison Keillor read “Blueberry” at The Writer’s Almanac: http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2009/04/19.

PETER’S POEM–LINE BY LINE As happens sometimes in staff development work, a tenth-grade English teacher one day pointed to a boy in the back and said to me, “I want to see what you can do with him.” His name was Peter. Peter found it hard to sit still in class. Often words just squeaked out of his mouth for sheer freedom. Smart. Quirky. Delightful. Funny, without meaning to be. He just needed to take that energy somewhere. His teacher once remarked that his notebook looked “like a drunk chicken walked all over it.” He liked that. Drew drunk chickens for the next three days. Then added captions for the rest of the week. One day the teacher asked Peter to stay behind so they could figure out how better to be in the same room together without her breaking out in hives. He packed up his things, took out his notebook, and started doodling a drunk chicken, with hives. He looked up. Five minutes to the bell. He drew a clock, like a drum, numbers being directed by the minute-hand baton. Then “Brrrrrriiiiiinnnnnggggg.” This sketch was one of only a few things the teacher could see in Peter’s notebook that she thought held any possibilities for writing. She knew Peter loved music, so the sketch helped her talk to him about his school experience, and beyond. Playing guitar. His love of rock. All things he dreamed of and couldn’t wait to do once school was out. Perhaps she could nudge him to expand his thinking, write some images to show his feelings about music. Many doodlings, snippets, long rambling pages later, they conferred. And conferred. The first poem to come out of this “body of material” was “The Weekend.” Yes, the moments before the bell. Peter dug in. Eventually the poem began to take the shape of what looked like a poem on the page. One day when I pulled up next to him, his draft looked like this: THE WEEKEND The wall clock’s baton rotates itself to the

three then smacks it on the downbeat the bell shrieks a long scream that electrifies my brain buzzing rhythm through my veins making songs hum through the membranes of my heart, my head, my hands a rock’n’roll runner at the line I dash for the door all free form, improv, ready to jam. The Energy of a Line PART OF MY JOB … WAS TO POINT OUT SUCH LINES, SUCH MOMENTS, TO SAY, HERE, LOOK AT THIS, ISN’T THIS INTERESTING? TO GET THEM TO FEEL THE PECULIAR ENERGY IN A LINE OF POETRY THEY HAD WRITTEN. —Jeffrey Skinner (2012, 4)

In conference with me, Peter read his poem aloud several times—which is how we were to sense its rhythm, hear its sounds, find the best words for the best effect. I read Peter’s poem aloud to him as well, so he could hear it. Right away we noticed that some lines ended unnaturally, with weak words, making us pause in odd places. Because the notation was unclear, we weren’t sure where to put stresses. We found ourselves stopping to back up a couple of times to find the sense, catch the rhythm again. So we went back, read the lines closely, paying attention to where and how our voices fell. Luckily, Peter understood the concept of notation in music. Sometimes he put the poem away for days. For distance. Then came back for a fresh read. An essential act, for any writer. All of this attention paid might make it seem like we were flogging Peter’s poem to death. But it’s really part of the process that becomes more habitual with practice. Some poets, like Lockward, record their poem in progress, hearing themselves say the poem, then listening as though the voice were an outsider. Does it sound right? Does it feel right in my mouth? Do I wince when I say this, hear this? If it’s still problematic, one can put it away for a while and come back when the sounds will be fresh. Yes, lines are that important. Crafting “The Weekend”

Let’s look at Peter’s lines as we did one day in front of the class. The comments in the righthand column are from me, from Peter’s classroom teacher, from Peter, and from other students.

It might be easier to follow this account if you copy out Peter’s poem. Looking at Peter’s work will be invaluable to other students as they revise their poems. • We stress “wall,” “ton,” “ro,” and “self.” The wall clock’s baton rotates itself to the

• “to the” seems to fall away. • End line on “itself.” • End on “downbeat,” as in directing. Strong.

three then smacks it on the downbeat the

• Or, end on “smacks it.” Action. • And enjamb with “on the downbeat” next line. • “The bell,” new stanza • End line on “scream.” Strong noun.

bell shrieks a long scream that • Enjamb “that” with next line. • Change words with “ing.” “Ing” softens. Want strength. Strong verbs. • “electrifies,” “buzzes.” “Brain buzzes.” Nice alliteration. • “brain” comma, “buzzes.” Take “rhythm” to next line. • Take out “making.” Weakens. “Songs hum.” A stronger word? “Pulse?” electrifies my brain buzzing rhythm through my veins making songs hum through the membranes

• “Brain, buzzes / rhythm . . . veins, pulses / and strains” • Add “strains”? Nice rhythm. • Enjamb “and strains” with next stanza. • End with “membranes,” enjamb with “of ” next line. • Assonance (repeated vowel sounds) nice:

“shrieks / screams; brain / veins / strains / membranes”

• “my heart, my head, my hands,” nice repetition and alliteration. Groups of three good. of my heart, my head, my hands and as • Rearrange, put “heart” last. if by instinct • Keep action going. Take out commas? Faster pace? • Put a dash (the mark) after “heart.”

a rock’n’roll runner at the line

• “Rock’n’roll runner.” Read stanza again. Whoa! Might interrupt momentum of action just when ready to “dash for the door.” • Move “I dash” to end of last line in stanza three. Voice falls hard on it. Strong action.

I dash for the door

• Propels us into next line. Read, “on my mark, I dash.” • “Heart” and “mark” closer together. Nice slant rhyme. • Enjamb for the door with next stanza • All in one line speeds up pace for getting out the door. • Or might slow down anticipation by giving each a line. • Pause at line ends. Pushing each phrase.

all free form, improv, ready to jam.

• Put in hyphen for slight pause: “for the door— all free form,” • move “improv” to next line by itself. • “ready to jam!” last line, by itself.

• “free form / improv / ready to jam!” Buildup of beats, nice rhythm. Syncopated. Okay. Here goes. The last draft. Maybe. If it sounds right. Reads right for Peter. Oh, the title. “The Weekend” seems okay. It’s what the speaker is waiting for. Peter and others suggest alternatives: “Week’s End” or “Bell Music” or “The Great Escape” or “Saved by the Bell,” or “Beating Time.” Oh. BEATING TIME The wall clock’s baton rotates itself to number three, then smacks it on the downbeat. The bell shrieks a long scream that electrifies my brain, buzzes rhythm through my veins, pulses and strains through the membranes of my head my hands my heart— on my mark, I dash for the door—all free form, improv, ready to jam! Beating Time: A Vocal Art

Whew! At last look, all Peter’s lines end with either strong verbs—smack it, screams, buzzes, pulses, dash, jam—or strong nouns—downbeat, membranes, heart, free form, improv. The lines vary in length, though they have a certain rhythm in common. Words are chosen and arranged in ways that create energy as the poem moves. His enjambments are varied and, as Pinsky says, “streak or leap across” the end of the line (1998, 27). Peter has some wonderful true and internal rhymes or slant rhymes: three/beat; brain/vein/strain/membrane; buzz/pulse; heart/mark; door/form. He created four stanzas, three lines each, separated by white space. Stanza one, the clock ticking, stands on its own, end-stopped. Then, “on the downbeat,” the bell rings, the music starts. Stanzas two and three run over into each other, the beats strong, the rhythms charging forward, rolling, rollicking, building in anticipation ’til the dash for the door. “Free form,” boom. “Improv,” boom. “Ready to Jam!”

BOOKSPINE POEMS THE LINE IS BUDDHA; THE SENTENCE IS SOCRATES. —Charles Simic (in McNair 2003, 49)

A book title is not usually a line of poetry. But if you are a saver of lines, then you might also see the fun in experimenting with bookspine poems. At the very least, these short poems can get us paying attention to line, can get the creative juices flowing. At the most they might stand alone or leap from their skeletons into fuller flesh. Lindsey’s Bookspine Poem

Lindsey was inspired to write a bookspine poem after her teacher shared one using titles by her favorite poet, Naomi Shihab Nye. So she browsed the class library’s shelves of picture books to see what caught her attention. Her strategy was to say one title out loud, then another, looking for a “theme.” She pulled books off the shelf and spread them around her on the carpet. She made a stack, read the titles aloud again, and rearranged the stack until she liked what she heard. Finally, here is the list of titles Lindsey wrote in her notebook. They are titles of books by, in order (starting with Lindsey’s poem title), Byrd Baylor (title), Joanne Ryder (first line), Peter Parnall (second and third lines), Jane Yolen (fourth line), Mingfong Ho (fifth line), and Ann Cameron (sixth line). Lindsey continued to meditate and rearrange over a few days. We agreed that placement is everything. The Other Way to Listen

Step Into the Night Quiet Spaces Wild Wings Maples in the Mist The Most Beautiful Place in the World Read aloud, this poem is mesmerizing for its rhythm and sound. Attention has already been paid to each title by the original author. But with this placement we believe the poem reads well. The title is rhythmic and sets up a little mystery. Step Into the Night invites us in with stresses on Step and Night. The brisk sounds of t and p. The fluid n’s. Even one-word titles-aslines have intrigue. The perk of qui-et. The fluid hisses in spa-ces. But, also, there is a buildup of anticipation by the placement of titles-as-lines. The escalating pace when two-syllable words on separate lines—both stressed on the first syllable

—move to two words, then to four, and then a longer ending line. Qui et—(rest)—Spa ces— (rest)—Wild Wings—(rest)—Maples in the Mist (the same rhythm as the first line, with nice alliteration and assonance)—(longer rest)—The Most Beautiful Place in the World. The last dreamy line stretches out and relaxes with stresses on Beau and Place and World. Rest. An interesting note: Try reading Lindsey’s bookspine poem from end to beginning.

POEMS COMPOSED OF ONE SENTENCE A poem that arrives in a single sentence brings a little burst of delight to the reader. While we wouldn’t want to label a work a “single-sentence poem” or a “three-sentence poem,” as if that were what beguiles us, we can see that some poems are one sentence long. By looking closely at this aspect of a poem, students can see and hear the difference between a sentence and a line of poetry. And usually a one-sentence poem is short enough to allow for playing around with line, vocally and in writing. William Carlos Williams’s poem “The Great Figure” is one sentence long. But, oh, how, cast upon the writer’s lathe, these few tension-ridden words captivate and move us through the chaos of a modern urban city. THE GREAT FIGURE Among the rain and lights I saw the figure 5 in gold on a red firetruck moving tense unheeded to gong clangs siren howls and wheels rumbling through the dark city. —WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS (1921, 78)

Along with the speaker, we see the “figure 5” through rain and lights and follow it as it rumbles and clangs its way through the streets. This “figure 5 / in gold” is the focal point of the poem around which the urban cacophony of gong clangs / siren howls revolves. Williams, in Imagistic fashion (a style of poetry that uses free verse, concrete imagery, and the patterns and rhythms of ordinary speech), uses very few words, without poetical devices such as metaphor or simile, to capture the sensory experience of the moment. This is a very short poem. Only thirty-one words. And yet the strategic use of line lengths, the strength and rhythm of the words, take us through the poem, building tension and pace as it goes. It begins with a specific setting, landing on “gold,” then one-word lines speed up the pace as they clang and howl. The longer lines end mainly in strong nouns, with one verb. Then the poem rumbles on into the night, ending as it began, Among the rain / and lights … through the dark city. Charles Demuth, captivated by the “figure 5” in the poem, clear amidst the city’s confusion, painted his iconic I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold (Figure 1).

FIGURE 1

I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold by Charles Demuth Note to readers: While Williams’s poem helps us look at line, you could just as well use it, with Demuth’s painting, as an example of ekphrasis—art facing art—(see “Poets Facing Art: Ekphrastic Poems” later in Part 3) or in the work on word sounds and placement in “Dances with Words” (earlier in Part 3) or in “The Music of It: Reading for Sound” (in Part 2), and so on. For any good poem is an example of the many elements coming together in its creation.

A FEW SUGGESTIONS FOR ENDING LINES IN FREE VERSE Remember, learning to shape a poem comes with experience reading and writing poems and usually during revision. Many poets who have been writing for years still wrestle with form. Here are some things to think about when ending lines. But the ideas suggested in this list are not as important as one’s ear “tuned” to the sounds of poetry. Things to Keep in Mind When Deciding on Line Endings • Create lines to reflect the mood of the poem. Short, staccato lines for excitement; a variety of lengths for mystery; longer languid lines for a dreamy quality, and so on. • End-stop some lines for a whole thought at rest. Enjamb some lines for moving thoughts and vocal rhythm. • End lines on nouns, verbs, words that carry meaning important to the poem. This lends strength to the voice as it lands, rests slightly, and pushes off. • End lines to create a feeling of anticipation for moving forward. • Think of your poem as a conversation between you (the speaker) and the reader; end lines to allow for thoughtful pauses or stops.

FURTHER LINE STUDY Addonizio, Kim, and Dorianne Laux. 1997. The Poet’s Companion. New York: W. W. Norton. Longenbach, James. 2008. The Art of the Poetic Line. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf. Pinsky, Robert. 1998. The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

THE OCCASIONAL POEM A POEM … IS MEANT TO POKE YOU, GET YOU TO BUCK UP, PAY ATTENTION, RISE AND SHINE, LOOK ALIVE, GET A GRIP, GET THE PICTURE, PULL UP YOUR SOCKS, WAKE UP AND DIE RIGHT. —Garrison Keillor (2005, xvii)

GRAND OCCASIONS Richard Blanco’s voice mail filled quickly. It was impossible to reach him ever since he was plucked out of near poetic obscurity to read at President Obama’s second inauguration on January 21, 2013. Blanco, the fifth poet to be so chosen, was ecstatic. He said in an interview that he was thrilled to be part of this great occasion, to celebrate the country and its people through the power of poetry. A great occasion. And a poem to “buck us up,” to help us “pay attention,” to “look alive.” Poetry has always fit great occasions in ways no other form would do. The relationship between poetry and the Olympics, for example, goes back some 2,500 years. In ancient Greece, writers at the events could be as popular as the athletes. Victorious athletes commissioned great poets, like Pindar, to write their victory odes (epinicia), which were sung at sumptuous banquets. (See “Here’s Looking at You: Homage Poems” later in Part 3.) Peter Armenti, in his online article “Pindar, Poetry, and the Olympics,” says, “Few art forms can capture and celebrate the heights of human potential as well as poetry” (2012). Throughout the Olympic Village in London in 2012, poetry joined sport in uplifting the spirit and reminding everyone how it feels to strive and to soar. During the “Rain of Poems,” a helicopter dropped over the banks of the Thames River 100,000 bookmarks featuring poems by 300 contemporary poets from 201 countries. The city held an Olympics poetry competition for children, and the BBC sponsored “The Written World” project, which broadcast a poem each day from each of the 201 participating nations. London’s mayor recited a specially commissioned poem, “Ode to Athens,” in Greek and English at the Royal Opera House. And the “Winning Words” project installed temporary and permanent poetry at Olympic Park.

MOURNFUL OCCASIONS Throughout history, in times of national tragedy and grief, poems have come along to help and to heal. Walt Whitman wrote his elegy “O Captain! My Captain!” honoring Abraham Lincoln after the sixteenth president’s assassination. It sums up the heartbreak of a nation. Lincoln is portrayed as the captain of the ship, America, that “has weather’d every rack,” until “the prize

we sought is won.” The Civil War and slavery are ended. But—as throngs are celebrating—“I with mournful tread / Walk the deck my captain lies / Fallen cold and dead” (Whitman 1977, 305).

FESTIVE OCCASIONS Poems find their way to traditional holiday tables and festivities. As adults, the three sisters in my family take turns “fracturing” a famous poem to lend merriment and continuity to our family gatherings. We keep it on the fun side, often including family members’ names in the poem. One Christmas, my sister Eve “recreated” Frost’s (1959) “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Brooke, one of Eve’s third graders, illustrated it as a picture book (Figure 2). STOPPING BY THE MIRROR ON A CHRISTMAS EVENING Whose hips these are I think I know. I’d rather not admit it though; I hope no one sees me stopping here To watch myself before the mirror grow. My friends and relatives must think it queer To eat like this with scales so near Between meals and before bedtime The busiest evening of the year. I give my stomach a little shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the rustle Of easy access to hidden fruitcake. My thighs are heavy, wide, and deep, But I have dinner dates to keep, And desserts to eat before I sleep, And desserts to eat before I sleep. —EVE POWELL

OCCASIONS FOR FRIENDSHIP

There is a tradition of poet friends writing verses to each other. An article on Poets.org called “Poems for Friendship” cites Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell dedicating verses to each other. Robert Frost wrote an elegy dedicated to poet Edward Thomas. Picasso painted a portrait of Gertrude Stein after she wrote, “Portrait of Picasso.” A contemporary example is the collaboration of Matthew Rohrer and Joshua Beckman, which resulted in a book, Nice Hat. Thanks (2002). Rohrer and Beckman would pass the work back and forth, each adding a word or line. The act is lighthearted, the wordplay serious, the poems depending on the reciprocity of friendship and improvisation.

FIGURE 2

One Page of Brooke’s Illustration of “Stopping by the Mirror on a Christmas Evening” Madeleine L’Engle sent poems with presents to her friends for all sorts of occasions. In the book Listening for Madeleine (Marcus 2012), her friend Dana Catherine says they were mostly silly poems. A few were serious. Once when Catherine asked Madeleine to write a birthday poem for her, she took out a list of churches of different denominations that the Episcopal Church used to pray for. Using the first letter of the name of each church on the list, she wrote a poem. My friend Barbara made hand-painted bookmarks for Christmas this year to send her friends. Each bookmark had a symbol or scene especially suited to that individual, each with a poem or a thought she wanted to share on the back. I received the book Owls and Other

Fantasies: Poems and Essays by Mary Oliver (2003). She placed her bookmark on page 27, at the poem “Yes! No!” On the bookmark Barb painted a feather, each stroke delicate and fine. On the other side, the last line of Oliver’s poem: “To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work” (2003, 27). Barbara and I, too, know about the importance of “walking along” and “opinions” and “proper work.” In 1986, former Poet Laureate Ted Kooser decided to have some fun. He wrote a “Pocket Poem,” had it printed on postcards (stamped in Valentine, Nebraska), and sent it to fifty women for Valentine’s Day. POCKET POEM If this comes creased and creased again and soiled as if I’d opened it a thousand times to see if what I’d written here was right, it’s all because I looked too long for you to put it in your pocket. Midnight says the little gifts of loneliness come wrapped by nervous fingers. What I wanted this to say was that I want to be so close that when you find it, it is warm from me. —TED KOOSER (2008, 1) Kooser continued this delightful practice for a number of years. Then in 2008 he published Valentines, a collection of some of these special poems, including “Pocket Poem.” In the foreword, he said he hoped readers would enjoy the reading half as much as he did “the writing, the licking of stamps, and the addressing to all those women who were willing to tolerate my foolishness” (2008, viii).

OCCASIONS FOR POEMS DAY TO DAY WHAT REALLY MATTERS ABOUT POETRY AND WHAT DISTINGUISHES POETS FROM, SAY, FASHION MODELS OR AD SALESMEN IS THE MIRACLE OF INCANTATION IN RENDERING THE GRAVITY AND GRACE AND BEAUTY OF THE ORDINARY WORLD AND THEREBY LENDING COURAGE TO STRANGERS.

—Garrison Keillor (2005, xvii) My sister Phyllis loves the word. She loves to read a good mystery and puzzle over everpresent crosswords. But one day, alone on her birthday, she was moved to write a poem. For

herself. Perhaps it was thinking back over the years or present circumstances or the surprise of snowflakes in early spring that led her to sit down and write a poem. But write she did. SNOW Snow comes softly today like an unsung melody. Quietly it enters and catches each beat of my heart. White frosts my hair; Cold stiffens my limbs. Winter mirrors the visions in my soul. I sing youthful songs, but snow tiptoes pianissimo in —PHYLLIS POWELL DODDS 71 today! On occasion, there is cause for celebration of poetry in classrooms, often at holiday time, or during Poetry Month, or at the end of a poetry unit. But what if we believed with Keillor that poetry is not a puzzle to be solved but instead it is “the last preserve of honest speech and the outspoken heart” (2005, xviii). What if we really believed that poetry could rescue us along the slippery slope of life? What if we really understood that poems can illuminate the life we all have in common, that all we can be we can find in a poem? What occasions, what news, could bring poems into the lives of our students day to day? Let’s take a look at one example.

THE POEM WHISPERER The “miracle of incantation” abides in Patrick’s classroom. He is the inspirational leader, the paver of ways. He understands that he—as the teacher the students look to, look up to—must be a breathing example for what he hopes his classroom community will be like. And so, when Li arrived from China, the very first day, Patrick had a poem waiting for him. He introduced Li to the class, told something of his background, then the entire class stood in a circle around Li, and said a welcome poem chorally. Li was given a copy to put in his notebook and one to start his poem collection. “Lending courage to strangers” (Keillor 2005, xvii). When Gillian announced that she had finally found a book she wanted to “stick with to the

end,” Patrick gave her one of the bookmarks he designed for just such occasions—“To keep you company through these pages.” This thoughtful gesture, with Patrick’s support, became a bookmark-designing ritual—verse finding, creating, and giving. Patrick cut sturdy paper (including watercolor paper) into bookmark shapes and encouraged the students to create art on them—watercolor, collage, lettering—and to write a poem. Finished bookmarks were kept in a wooden box, ready for students to find a special occasion for giving. One day Patrick pronounced himself the “Poem Whisperer.” Whenever people felt like they just needed a poem (like a hug), they would let him know and he would whisper a poem to them. He might choose from his personal collection of poetry books near his desk, his folder of favorites, poems in his notebook, a recommendation from a student, or he might have one memorized. When Harlan, not a morning person, came to school grumpy again one day, Tamika suggested he might need the Poem Whisperer. Patrick allowed Harlan time to settle down, then he kneeled alongside and read Mekeel McBride’s “The Truth About Why I Love Potatoes.” Just for him. THE TRUTH ABOUT WHY I LOVE POTATOES 1. Of everything you get for dinner they’re the most fun to play with: gravy lakes soaking deep into the soft white Alps of the mashed ones; French fries good for fences to keep your fork safe from Lima beans; the baked ones perfect for pounding down into pancakes from the moon. 2. I guess I forgot to mention how much I used to love globbing mashed potatoes into a ball then hurling it at my brother so it seemed he was the one who had made the mess. Now I know grownups do that too, but usually not with potatoes. 3. If a potato were able to turn into a person, I’m almost certain it would be someone

you’d like for a friend. It could teach you to understand the language of animals who live underground: worms and woodchucks, foxes and bears. On rainy Saturday afternoons, it would take you to funny movies. When you were feeling sad, it would remind you of the good things you’d forgotten about yourself. 4. There might be dozens, even more, in the garden, without you ever knowing, fat moons blooming a secret night sky right under your feet. 5. If I could have my wish, I’d want my poem to be just like a potato. Not afraid of the dark. Simple and surprising at the same time. You’d have to dig a little to get it but then you’d be glad you made the effort. And maybe after you were finished, something in you that had been hungry for a long time wouldn’t feel so empty anymore. —MEKEEL MCBRIDE (2001, 64) At the classroom window ledge, Patrick placed a journal called “Book of Lines.” He believed, with Katherine Paterson, that “the growth of the imagination demands windows— windows through which we can look out at the world and windows through which we can look into ourselves” (1989, 61). With this book he invited students to stare out of the window. Whatever they saw—whatever they were nudged to think, or wonder, or want to ask—they could sketch and write a line or two. The first day of school Patrick stood at the window. He noticed faded words painted on an old building across the street: “McKan’s shoes, good for the sole.” The play on words made him chuckle. And he was reminded of his favorite sneakers in second grade. Despite the holes in the soles—socks getting wet, toes getting cold—he would not part with them. He made a quick sketch of the side of the building, the sign. In the middle of the page he printed, “What’s gruel for the sole is gravy for the soul.” A real word maven. Underneath the line he sketched a pair of worn sneakers inside a heart. As months passed, people would sometimes share their observations and lines. Some would push off from

their lines in their own notebooks to make new poems. Once, Leon asked Janine if he could “borrow” one of her lines for a poem he was writing. The ultimate honor. Students in Patrick’s class went on to create new occasions and everyday themes for making and giving poems: Lucky poems; favorite word poems; vegetable poems; the “day of the” … black cloud, blizzard, power outage, sneaky test, big laugh; poems when you feel you’re losing hope; poems for a good deed; clothing poems; silly-nilly poems; wishing-well poems; poems for the movies. “Rendering the gravity and grace and beauty of the ordinary world” (Keillor 2005, xvii).

AN ADDITIONAL SAMPLING OF OCCASIONAL POEMS Academy of American Poets. 2013. Poets.org. http://www.poets.org. (Lots of poems by category. A list of life occasions that may present an opportunity for poems.) Heard, Georgia. 2002. This Place I Know: Poems of Comfort. New York: Candlewick. Housden, Roger. 2012. Ten Poems to Say Goodbye. New York: Harmony Books. Keillor, Garrison, ed. 2005. Good Poems for Hard Times. New York: Penguin. Kooser, Ted. 2008. Valentines. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Murray, Joan, ed. 2001. Poems to Live By in Uncertain Times. Boston: Beacon.

POEMS FOR ALL SEASONS WHEN YELLOW LEAVES, OR NONE, OR FEW, DO HANG UPON THOSE BOUGHS WHICH SHAKE AGAINST THE COLD… —William Shakespeare, Sonnet LlXXIII

The seasons are like bulbs, fat and full underground. In their time, they edge up and unfold with meaning. With a focus on the season, poets, conscious and careful, reach deeply into their senses. They summon the muses of emotion and memory. They gather a bounty of words and images and hone them with the specifics of the moment. Exploring seasons, we can connect with the music of all life’s processes and join in the harmony.

POEMS REMEMBERED Harry, a stage manager, can still quote Frost’s “Dust of Snow.” It reminds him of his winter walks as a young man growing up in Maine. How even the slightest sound or sight or bit of energy can resound and stay. “The way a crow / Shook down on me / The dust of snow / From a hemlock tree / Has given my heart / A change of mood / And saved some part / Of a day I had rued” (Frost 1959, 80). Jackson, a twelfth-grade teacher, reads a small section he remembers from T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”: “April is the cruelest month / breeding lilacs out of the dead land / mixing memory and desire / stirring dull roots with spring rain” (1934, 27–47). My Aunt Eva, spying a patch of yellow at the back of the barn in spring, would quote Wordsworth: “I wandered lonely as a cloud / That floats on high o’er vales and hills / When all at once I saw a crowd / A host of golden daffodils” (1990, 21–22). Anna Lee, a cellist, remembers, as a child, turning the pages of a book of Robert Louis Stevenson poems, gazing at a faded watercolor scene of the sea, yearning for summer. She looked up the poem again: “When I was down beside the sea / A wooden spade they gave to me / To dig the sandy shore. / My holes were empty like a cup. / In every hole the sea came up, / Till it could come no more” (2011, 9). A more current poem by Li-Young Lee called “Falling: The Code” reminds my friend David of his grandparents’ apple orchard on a hill in upstate New York—the “stem-snap, the plummet / through leaves, then / the final thump against the ground” (1993, 28–29). He can still smell the spicy fruit in fall, and imagine the deer reaching up at dusk to pull off one or two. He can hear the pumph of apples as they hit the ground.

SKETCHING TREES IN WINTER LIKE THE WHEEL OF THE YEAR, WE ARE CALLED TO MOVE FORWARD, BEYOND OLD LIMITING STORIES WE HAVE LIVED BY, TO CREATE NEW MYTHS CLOSER TO OUR HEART’S DESIRE. —Arlene Gay Levine (2011, 70–71) A few years ago, in the “dark of December,” I ventured out into the wilds of winter to study trees in their bareness. Especially a small copse of maples I had discovered earlier. Very soon it started to snow. Sketching wasn’t easy as the snow began to shade the trees. My tingling fingers became numb and the paper wet. However, that image of the maples stayed in my mind. At different times, I sketched several more versions of the trees—single trees, or groupings silhouetted against a darkening sky. They didn’t stand out enough so I began to erase around the trees, making more of a contrast. I was somewhat satisfied now, the trees standing out, us recognizing each other. A poem came fairly easily. SKETCHING TREES IN WINTER Squatting down behind a stone fence, the trees at the top of the hill, as familiar as my face, look oddly new, uneasy, like the air between us. Quiet seeps into my woolen gloves. My pencil line gives a shiver as I hurry to catch their thin bones in the dwindling daylight. When I lift out the dark around their sharp-edged shadows they greet me, suddenly, like first friends. —SHIRLEY MCPHILLIPS (2013) A full year later, anticipating a personal winterization, I reread this poem in my notebook. I

looked back at the sketches. One tree stood out. It looked small and twisted. Resolute, I thought, though feeble against the flying snow. It leaned slightly forward in a beckoning gesture. But its limbs were stiff, some broken off. Suddenly I had a sad, regretful feeling. Like a lost opportunity. Like something too late to fix. This tree didn’t “greet me / like a first friend.” There was distance between us. I would keep the initial image in my poem, though it represented something different to me now. I would change a clutch of trees to one tree. The ghost tree. And I had further to go. THE GHOST TREE Squatting behind a stone wall, the tree at the top of the hill, as familiar as my face, looks oddly new, uneasy, like the whitening air between us. Quiet seeps into my woolen gloves. My pencil line gives a shiver as I hurry to catch its thin bones in the dwindling light. Back inside, when I erase the dark to reveal its sharper edges, it greets me like a stranger, his arms gray with winter, reaching not something he remembers. —SHIRLEY MCPHILLIPS

WHAT I SAW: WRITING THE IMAGE SEEING COMES BEFORE WORDS. —John Berger (1972, 7) Poems are grounded in the actual world. What we see, hear, what comes to us. In any season, writers can practice paying attention. Writing down snatches of words allows us to build a habit of finding things interesting, of holding on to them. Perhaps we won’t know right away

where the interest lies, or just what fascination there is, until we start to explore in writing. We can do this ourselves and with our students: Write three things you saw this morning (or on our walk today, or after school, or …). Start with “This morning I saw …” and make a list: “a spruce bough,” “two white chairs on a hill,” “a cracked plate.” Just get used to noticing things, and jotting. Don’t be fancy. When students share, they can become more aware of and marvel at what there is to notice. Later, in the classroom, students can pick an observation and “stretch it.” Say, “What else?” Say, “Where?” Say, “Doing what?” For example, “the wing of a spruce dipped with rain;” “two white chairs sit on a hill, sunwashed:” “a cracked plate, spotted with bits of pepper and corn.” These lines can be the start of a longer image or find their way into poems. When the teacher jots some on a chart from time to time for all to see, awareness builds. Here is an example I have used with students about a maple leaf that caught my eye one autumn morning, and how I worked it out in my notebook. I was on my morning walk. The sharp light caught the leaves in a blinding show. One lone leaf hung precariously, backlit in startling shine, slick from an overnight shower. I stopped to jot down what I saw.

I kept looking, and wrote it again, stretching to use more colorful words:

A day or so later I looked longer, up closer, thinking detail, with my poet’s glasses more focused. What I know about poetic language, from reading lots of poems and trying my hand, came into the writing. I let myself write surprising words, not censoring myself. Somehow my human heart was responding, “gazing back.”

In my notebook, over time, I started making more poemlike lines, deepening the image. I crossed out and substituted words. Made stanzas. I started to think about specific and surprising words, the rhythm, sounds, as I read it aloud. Red Maple leaf stretches out into the morning air, a flat hand, leathered with the rough work of pointing, offending off. One vibrant line pulses a red kindness through green pathways to the tips. Small bones of cell strengthen each lobe, keep them together, hold them apart. Specks of rain streak its face, deepen into a quiet stain, like old blood.

WHAT I SAW: PUSHING PAST THE IMAGE I could stop here and feel I had written a pretty good image. That I had shared my observation fairly well with a reader. That a reader might see a leaf, or something else, a little differently next time. The poem sounds “right,” feels right, when I read it. But I’m challenged by something poet Marie Howe said to us in a workshop at Omega Institute in New York: “What if this were not just an image standing alone? As you write, bring into your heart someone you love deeply: father, mother, child, friend. Write it with that person in mind. Bring us into the

experience. Start by writing the person’s name at the top of the page” (2011). I write “George Edward Powell” at the top of my notebook page. My father was a beloved and gentle man who died violently. Right away I feel the image shift. That startling leaf, struggling to hold on. The colors, the dire blotchings on its face, a mirror. Daddy, in pain, desperate, no longer trusting in any power but himself to save him. And devastated by that conclusion. The giving up and letting go. This was not an easy place for me to go. But poets do go to hard places. Poems sometimes take us there. A kind of salvation. Teachers may have a few students who would want to take a risky personal step. Not necessarily as dramatic a step as mine. Needless to say, new drafting begins. New surprises. It’s a whole different poem. Here’s my latest version. WAITING FOR MY FATHER A maple leaf stretches out into the autumn air, flat, leathered with the rough work of taking in and fending off. Small bones of cellular sinew strengthen the lobes—keep them together, hold them apart. One stemlinepulses a red kindness to the tips—curled, dewslick. Specks of rain stain its face and deepen into blotches of rust like blood from an old wound. And still it waits. My father, when he tires of clinging to what’s left of what he has loved; and when he no longer trusts in the wisdom of his holy roots, he will welcome the ruthless rush of windfall. —SHIRLEY MCPHILLIPS

I was working in Lila’s eighth-grade class on noticing and jotting when she explained about “a cracked plate” she had observed. She had written those three words in her notebook. The plate brought back a memory of taking tea with her grandmother. Again, as Howe had asked participants to do at Omega, she brought a person she loved into her mind as she composed. THE CRACKED PLATE Afternoon tea, with tea things spread out on a lace scarf she made when she was an English girl, thin now like the skin of her hands lifting the delicate pot to pour. We sit and talk about different things, like the cookies on the cracked plate with the castle scene and the gold rim, some of this and some of that. The way we lift our cups and our cookies to our lips. The way she says, “do have another, my dear,” lifting up the cracked plate that holds so much of what we love.

WALKING FOR POEMS POEMS HANG OUT WHERE LIFE IS. —Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge (1996, 4) Enrique believes that poems don’t always come when a person sits at a desk intending to write a poem. He knows that when we tell the brain, “I am now going to write a poem—and in 15 minutes”—that’s enough to scare the muses right back into their lairs for six months. So, a couple of times in every season, Enrique and his seventh graders go outside and meander. They take along their notebooks and a pencil. That’s it. Enrique quotes Wooldridge to his students from day one: “All I needed to begin writing was freedom and white pages hiding in the dark of two covers” (1996, 7). They are learning to see, to let things catch their attention, being open to anything and everybody. They will jot down words, images, in snatches, sketches, lines—surprises, sounds, bold notes. Over days they will share and mull over these notes to find what rises up, like cream; what beckons to be made.

Autumn in New York

Enrique walks along the street with his class. And me. We’re headed to Riverside Park along the Hudson River in New York. The sunlight is slanted, the air coolish, just right for walking. Enrique leads the way with a commentary I find challenging to imitate, but it goes something like this: Let’s stop here un momento—Hey, look up—Shh. Listen. Hear that?—What’s that sound like?—Wow, long time since I’ve seen one of those—Closer, get closer. Cant discover anything way back there. Keep looking. Nothing’s too big or too small—Rápido, what do you notice about that dog?—Atención, por favor, we are in the presence of history, right here—Would you say a twister came through here?—What’s that say on the back of that mans shirt?—Let’s sit down, meditate a while. You know, meditate, cogitate—think?—We’ll jot for, umm, maybe five minutes. I know you’ll be screaming for more time but … Shh, let your pencil do the talking right now … When we read Enrique’s words in a big clump like this, it might seem as though he talked a dizzying, endless stream. But slow it down. Imagine white space around these lines. The white space of quiet as he lets thoughts, observations, questions, hang in the air. In Enrique’s words, “It’s all about keeping your eyes, ears, and heart open.” His way of speaking creates a pattern of curiosity and thoughtfulness students can use in that moment, and later on their own. April’s Autumn Poem

A few days after the autumn walk with Enrique and his class, I pulled up next to April during their writing workshop. I could see she was a purposeful doodler. The latest two or three pages were mostly dogs. Dogs on leashes, various sizes and shapes, meandered across the pages like the class moving through the park. April had shared her notes with a writing friend, then started jotting key words from her pages. Everything else she observed fell away except the dogs along a trail, carefree on a bright fall day. Understandable, if you’ve ever walked in a city park and you love dogs. She didn’t realize it at first, but her list of keywords formed the structure of her final poem: dogs … proud, perky, tough, fancy, rough. When Enrique conferred with April, he asked her to tell him more about each dog, what caught her attention, how they were alike and different. He wanted to get an image of what, specifically, she noticed each dog doing, maybe catch each dog’s personality. He suggested she jot some of that next to the dogs on her list: soft dog, rubbing against the bench … tough dog, kicking up the leaves. These actions extend the poem. They allow us to imagine the differences among the dogs, to see what April sees. Later she decided to give each dog a voice. Something she imagined they were thinking. I was skeptical of this at first but when I read April’s poem with and without, both worked for me. In the end, I thought the voices gave character to the dogs and revealed their individual

spirits. This poem is not a “seasonal” poem per se (nor is any poem, really). But it is inspired by the images and particulars of a seasonal experience. Perhaps in the future, when April thinks of fall, she might remember the dogs of autumn. Here is April’s poem. Small note: April had written the verbs with -ing: charging, rubbing, prancing, and so on. Sounds smooth. But Enrique asked her to take off the -ings and notice how the energy of the poem changed. Her choice. WALKING WITH DOGS Rough dog charges the garden fence Don’t keep me away from flowers Soft dog rubs against the bench Let me sit with you and watch the boats Fancy dog prances down the path Give me my space Rough dog barges through the leaves Unleash me, set me free Perky dog jerks on the leash What’s this? What’s that? Sniff Proud dog Lifts her head in a pose You may pet me now My dog someday

Enrique’s Tips: From Observation to Poem • Take a walk, with notebook • Notice things, big and small: talk, sights, sounds, light, signs, air, actions • Make notes, keywords, quick sketches, as reminders • Sit, listen, think about what you hear, see, make notes: What do you think? Feel?

Wonder? • Put star by two, three things that affect you, that you want to think more about • Pick one, write action, image, thoughts • Read out loud. Catch the sound, rhythm • Revise, sharpen image, add a thought, read out loud • Revise, shape for strong line endings, pauses, spaces • Read out loud ’til it sounds “right”

HAIKU: THE SHORTEST GENRE ALL THINGS AROUND US ARE ASKING FOR OUR APPREHENSION, WORKING FOR OUR ENLIGHTENMENT … IT IS A SINGLE FINGER POINTING TO THE MOON. —R. H. Blyth (1952, i) I had just checked into http://www.poetsonline.org to look for upcoming haiku events when I saw it—a link to a post by John J. Dunphy. A bookstore owner, Dunphy had perused a collection of “best” poetry and was not impressed by the haiku. In his post for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch called “A Month for Haiku: But What Is It?” he expressed his dismay. Scanning Dunphy’s article, that’s when, yikes, at the very end, I saw it. “Cramming a sentence into a 5– 7–5 straitjacket does not a haiku make” (Dunphy 2013). The clouds parted. Certainly there is pleasure to be found in a simple principle of symmetry. Yet it helps to know that although master Japanese haiku poets did write using the 5–7–5 structure, that structure applied to sounds, not syllables. According to Dunphy, “Many translators maintain that about twelve English syllables approximate the duration of seventeen sounds in the Japanese language” (2013). Haiku poets in different parts of the world, even the masters, often ignore the 5–7–5 pattern because of such language differences. A focus on the outer form of haiku often accepts any words in combination of 5–7–5, whereas a formal requirement for haiku is to state two images separated by a pause. Buying him a kite, The child is fretful, In the unending rain. —SHOHA (IN BLYTH 1952, 49)

THAT HAIKU MOMENT —THAT SPLIT SECOND WHEN WE FIRST EXPERIENCE SOMETHING BUT BEFORE WE BEGIN

TO THINK ABOUT IT.

—L. Kip Wheeler (2013) “Shirl. There’s a mosquito on your hand.” At that Richard reaches over and slaps my hand, causing a strange calligraphy of unintended marks on my notebook page. We have picked our way along a storm-tossed trail near Frost Place in New Hampshire and now sit on a downed tree trunk. We have sprayed the requisite insect deterrent to no avail. The quietude necessary for enlightenment has eluded us so far. More swats. An occasional oy. In my notebook I write: All the time I search for words— I slap at mosquitoes. Basic Characteristics of Haiku

• Haiku have no titles. • Haiku focus on nature and imagistic language. They often refer to the seasons (kigo). • A season may be mentioned, or certain words may suggest the season. For example, frogs or cherry blossoms for spring; fireflies or heat for summer; crickets for fall; snow or bare trees for winter. Sean, my son, likes to write haiku when he visits Japan on business. In his poems, shown here, the words “March,” “fruit for sale now,” and “bare legs” suggest spring, when the air has warmed. March street is closed off, fruit for sale in boxes now— Choose orange for her. Bare legs walk about— Watching them all walk uphill, but none of them hers. —SEAN MCPHILLIPS • “Traditional haiku often include pause marks, called kiriji (“cutting words”), that help to mark the rhythmic divisions” (Addiss 2012, 4). • In English translations, divisions that separate one part of the poem from another are sometimes marked with a colon, semicolon, dash, or ellipsis. These segments stand alone

but support one another to enrich our understanding. The shell of a cicada: It sang itself Utterly away. —BASHO (IN BLYTH 1952, 235) • Haiku use plain language that is not symbolic. Not the poetic devices we’re used to in Western poetry. Brevity leaves room for various interpretations. “Like the inside of a glass or cup, it is the empty space that is most valuable” (Addiss 2012, 3). • Haiku is a form of expression that nurtures a way of living closer to life.

BEYOND WORDS: A TEACHER’S JOURNEY Calley allowed herself the summer to get into haiku. She wanted her future classes to experience “the shortest genre” inside and out. She would begin with herself. She created a short stack of books for inspiration and information about haiku. She borrowed a copy of Robert Hass’s (1994) translations—The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa —and bought Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers by Leonard Koren (2008). Calley read the Japanese masters as well as modern haiku. She bought a new notebook and practiced observing, giving herself the pleasure of writing at least one description every couple of days (which would grow to one a day) along with some quick sketches. The habit took hold. The pages blossomed. “I always work best when I have a project,” she told me. “People ask me how my haiku project is going. That makes me feel productive.” Along the way Calley added to her stack: Seeds from a Birch Tree: Writing Haiku and the Spiritual Journey by Clark Strand (1998); A Zen Wave: Basho’s Haiku and Zen by Robert Aitken (1979); The Haiku Handbook.: How to Write, Share, and Teach Haiku by William J. Higginson and Penny Harter (2010). She made notes in her notebook and read over what she had written. Happily, she started making haiku. Cat’s tail twitches under the forsythia— chasing sparrow dreams Two yellow leaves touch as they fall— we watch for winter

Once, Calley thought writing haiku was “easy.” So small, it looked effortless. Not that it’s a laborious process, but soon she learned that a description is intense, specific. It is objective but not purely objective. Filtered through personal experience it can resonate personally with readers. What Students Might Need

Calley’s personal haiku study allowed her to think about what she hoped for her students.

Calley’s Plan for Haiku Study with Students Based on Her Own Inquiry • Read lots of haiku, traditional and modern • Read haiku to oneself and aloud, hear the sound, feel the weight • Talk with others about haiku, share personal favorites • Copy personal favorites in notebook • Practice paying attention to small “moments” in everyday life, record in notebook • Begin to read through notebook jottings, try hand at making haiku • Notice, find out about poems by traditional haiku masters • Ask others how their “projects” are going; share jottings with others • Go back to favorite haiku, notice structure and markings, use to revise • Publicly honor the art of haiku, original haiku (send as cards, read at functions …)

By the second year of the study, Calley had collected haiku from books and students and put them in folders, mainly according to seasons. Original poems were read and copied for personal collections. “Moments” in the ongoing daily life of the classroom were sometimes memorialized in haiku form—by students and Calley—and presented to classmates. She encouraged students to give haiku to family members and friends for special occasions.

A Few Beliefs That Guide Calley’s Work • The teacher is the learner-in-chief. • Trying to teach without inspiring a desire to learn is “hammering on cold iron” (Horace Mann).

• Inquiry is the curious mind and the passionate heart at work. • We teach what we believe whether we realize it or not. • There is a limit to verbal instruction; we learn by example and experience.

Honoring Haiku

In time, reading and writing haiku became an option for Calley’s students. But first, they organized a tea ceremony with some of their parents and some friends from another class. It was simple and elegant. Each student read a haiku to recorded koto music. Anne read two haiku she adapted from her longer poem called “The Poet.” Footprints in the sand— a sandpiper hops working tiny feet The sandpiper turns to measure its footprints— such a long journey At the end of the year, Calley added another book to her stack: Take a Deep Breath: The Haiku Way to Inner Peace by Sylvia Forges-Ryan (2006).

MORE THOUGHT FOR SUMMERFALLWINTERSPRING Addiss, Stephen. 2012. The Art of Haiku. Boston: Shambhala. Blyth, R. H. 1952. Haiku, Volume3: Summer-Autumn. Tokyo: Hokuseido. ——. 1950. Haiku, Volume 2: Spring. Tokyo: Hokuseido. Cassedy, Sylvia, and Kunihiro Suetake, trans. 1992. Red Dragonfly on My Shoulder. New York: HarperCollins. Demi, ed. 1992. In the Eyes of the Cat: Japanese Poetry for All Seasons. Translated by TzeSi Huang. New York: Henry Holt. Dunphy, John J. 2013. “A Month for Haiku: But What Is It?” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 16. http://www.stltoday.com/entertainment/books-and-literature/a-month-for-haiku-butwhat-is-it/article_0cda096f-1976-503a-9f56-0d59d38df027.html. Hass, Robert, trans. and ed. 1994. The Essential Haiku. New York: HarperCollins. Hopkins, Lee Bennett, ed. 2010. Sharing the Seasons: A Book of Poems. New York: Margaret

K. McElderry Books. Keillor, Garrison, ed. 2011. Good Poems, American Places. New York: Penguin. Kooser, Ted. 2000. Winter Morning Walks: One Hundred Postcards to Jim Harrison. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University Press. Soji. 2013. “Basho.” Haiku Poets Hut. http://www.haikupoetshut.com/basho1.html. (Multiple translations of Basho, side by side.)

POETS FACING ART: EKPHRASTIC POEMS

WORKS OF ART INITIATE AND PRODUCE OTHER WORKS OF ART; THE PROCESS IS A SOURCE OF ART ITSELF. —Edward Hirsch (1994, 10)

THE SCREAM: EDVARD MUNCH Minutes before our adult poetry-writing group got down to business, talk was about Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream. Sotheby’s had just sold the 1895 pastel version for 119.9 million dollars. Petra recalled a cartoon in The New Yorker by Roz Chast in which she gave her alternate versions: “The Yawn,” “The Pout,” and “The Sigh.” We laughed. It’s hard not to react to The Scream. Who doesn’t imagine the sound coming from that horrified mouth, or wonder what the character has seen or heard. Someone suggested we try an ekphrastic poem— a poem made in response to art—in reaction to The Scream. Our way of telling the story, of interpreting the image. What an adventure that was! Actually, Munch wrote about his inspiration for The Scream in a diary entry and later as a slightly revised poem that he hand painted onto the frame of the 1895 pastel version of the work. I was walking along a path with two friends—the sun was setting—suddenly the sky turned blood red—I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence—there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city—my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety—and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature. (1892) Just a few years ago Monica Youn wrote a remarkable poem about one of two painted versions of The Scream stolen in 1994 from the National Gallery in Oslo, Norway. It was recovered, undamaged, after a sting operation. Youn’s poem, “Stealing the Scream,” takes place at the museum and uses detailed imagery of the crime scene to help the reader imagine what’s going on. Ironically, the figure’s frozen hysteria mirrors the fact that something horrendous is happening in the museum. It was hardly a high-tech operation, stealing The Scream. That we know for certain, and what was left behind— a store-bought ladder, a broken window, and fifty-one seconds of videotape, abstract as an overture.

And the rest? We don’t know. But we can envision moonlight coming in through the broken window casting a bright shape over everything—the paintings … the floor tiles, the velvet ropes: a single, sharp-edged pattern; the figure’s fixed hysteria rendered suddenly ironic by the fact of something happening; houses clapping a thousand shingle hands to shocked cheeks along the road from Oslo to Asgardstrand; the guards rushing in—too late!—greeted only by the gap-toothed smirk of the museum walls; and dangling from the picture wire like a baited hook, a postcard: “Thanks for the poor security.” The policemen, lost as tourists, stand whispering in the galleries: “…but what does it all mean?” Someone has the answers, someone who, grasping the frame, saw his sun-red face reflected in that familiar boiling sky. —MONICA YOUN (2003, 28)

GIVING VOICE TO WHAT IS SILENT Perhaps many of us have read ekphrastic poems without knowing the term: “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats (in Quiller-Couch 1919). “Archaic Torso of Apollo” by Rainer Maria Rilke (in Mitchell 1989). Or perhaps more recently we’ve read “Facing It” by Yusef Komunyakaa (2001). When a poet responds to visual art with art of his or her own, the result is ekphrasis. Ekphrasis comes from the Greek, meaning “a vivid description of a thing.” A skilled way of describing art. Modern poets have shifted from elaborate description. They may face works of art—paintings, photographs, sculpture, even quilts—by speaking to the image, making it speak, speaking of it interpretively, speaking as a character, meditating upon the moment of viewing it, and so on. A deep understanding of what ekphrasis truly is is still debated by scholars. However, I think we can say with certainty that there is no thought of “improving” on the art one is observing. But that moving back and forth through art forms can be an exhilarating way of bringing a new spark of life to an existing passion, of creating a new dialogue among forms. In setting poetry in a different context we can develop a spirit of flexibility, of imagination, of

creation. The result is its own individual miracle.

EKPHRASIS AT WORK IN THE WORLD: SOME CURRENT EXAMPLES As a teacher, when planning an experience with the students, I used to ask myself, “Is this something people in the ‘real world’ do? Or is this one of those ‘only in school’ type things that stop right where they start, with few, or any, connections being made beyond the exercise?” In that spirit, I can report that ekphrasis is everywhere, expanded to include responses to art using different types of media. In fact, I read a comment on a poetry blog recently that said, “Ekphrasis is the new hot topic.” Here are some current examples of ekphrasis at work. • Nathasha Trethewey, U.S. Poet Laureate for 2012–2013, was introduced recently as an ekphrastic poet because of her recent work in response to photographs. • The Dessoff Choir, an independent chorus in New York that performs new or rarely heard works, titled their 2013 Midwinter Festival in New York City word.play. The festival celebrated the bonding of Whitman, Frost, and music. Listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJZU8ixx8is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzNKZEdTFC8 • Con Fullam, songwriter, invited forty-eight of Maine’s community of musicians, visual artists, writers, and fine-furniture makers to join in a collaborative multimedia effort called Painters, Players & Poets. Read about it: http://www.paintersplayersandpoets.com/. • Poets.org shows video adaptations of six poems, by Wanda Coleman, Rita Dove, Allen Ginsberg, Amy Hempel, Mark Strand, and Anne Waldman. Take a look: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/23387? utm.source=March%3A+Film+Update&utm.campaign=march_update&utm_medium=email. • On the literature, culture, and art blog called Bark, we learn that tech-savvy writers are making what poet Todd Boss calls “motion poems.” This animated poetry is now showing up in some college syllabi, giving poems a new presence. Here’s a link: http://thebarking.com/2011/02/animated-poetry-how-design-and-interactive-media-arechanging-the-way-we-view-prose/.

SCULPTURE TO POEMS Robert Francis’s poem “Museum Vase” is an endlessly evocative and deftly crafted ekphrastic

poem. It is written in three three-line stanzas (tercets), each with three words. Its visual appearance seems appropriate to the object it describes. The vase, once a vessel for work, now a work of art. MUSEUM VASE It contains nothing. We ask it to contain nothing. Having transcended use It is endlessly Content to be. Still it broods On old burdens— Wheat, oil, wine. —ROBERT FRANCIS (1975, 37) Inspired by “Museum Vase,” especially as it speaks to our lives, a group of my friends decided to let sculpture be our muse. Our group meets periodically for what we call our “art evenings,” a gift we give ourselves. Our friend Shuli, a sculptor, loaned us two of her clay teapots, called “Dancing Freckles,” to admire (Figure 3).

FIGURE 3

Sculptures by Shuli Pilo, called Dancing Freckles (photo by Hank Gans) We arranged the sculptures in various ways and each person began to comment: “The figures complimented one another”; “no matter which way you turned them they had a certain rhythm”; “this way they beckon to one another, this way they turn away”; “they are smooth yet blotched”; “they seem to move yet stand still”; “they’re in a dance, what kind?” Then the observations started to spin off and get personal—issues of relationships past, how we feel at this stage of the game, and so forth. We would spin out and then reel back in to the sculptures. Observations and discussions about the teapot sculptures led to maybe six minutes of jotting, sketching, and stringing lines. Then we shared what we had written so far. Each person took time to read her initial “playing around,” and the rest of us wowed and cooed our responses. Lu and Linny wrestled with their beginnings like kittens with catnip and sent around e-mails of their progress. No surprise, their processes and poems are highly individualistic. Both fascinating. Here’s Linny’s ekphrastic poem, with sculptures as muse: PUZZLING POTTERY Entranced by my new and treasured find, A sudden question comes to mind. Will you be a wallflower on the shelf just sitting there pretty all by yourself?

or Will you brew a spicy tea, and do a flavored dance with me? Whichever it is, and may both be tried— Let the pleasure you bring be multiplied. Release the power of passionate art, poured from the potter’s generous heart. —LINDA VAN ORDEN This is Lu’s ekphrastic poem, with sculptures as muse: YOU My words float towards you, specks of dust caught in a moment of sunlight, only to disappear. I move closer, touch the frayed edge of your sleeve, caressing the worn threads. But you lean away, and stand looking out the window as if the burnt summer grass holds some secret fire. —LOUISE SASAKI

Could these poems be more different, both ladies observing the same objects? Yet both are evocative and satisfying to read. It is endlessly curious how poems come to be, what can inspire, what of life we bring to our creative endeavors. Lessons for working with our young people.

PAINTING TO POEM: AN INTERNAL DIALOGUE Bruce, a writer I met on http://www.poetsonline.org, responded to a prompt on that website to write a poem inspired by a tree. Luckily, he found some old prints in a friend’s attic, and Piet Mondrian’s cubist “The Gray Tree” (Figure 4) was one of them.

FIGURE 4

The Gray Tree by Piet Mondrian Bruce was struck by the impression of the tree, how childlike that painting seemed, thus the left and right sides of the brain in conversation in his poem. Here’s Bruce’s ekphrastic poem. ART, FOR PETE’S SAKE Mondrian’s tree. What about it? I was just looking at it. And?

I was just thinking. Yes, you were. It’s very … treelike. It’s very like a tree. But it isn’t a tree. No, it isn’t. As if from life, but once removed. Art is life at a remove. It’s not the real article at all, is it? It’s not really real, no. The hand copies what the eye sees. The hand, I’d say, copies the mind. Of course! Which copies what the eyes see. Pretty much. Tree. Eye. Mind. Hand. And the actual painting itself. And there’s that too. The five stages of art. Or the five levels, plus the viewer. And their eyes, and their minds. It’s getting complicated, isn’t it? Surely. Then it must be difficult to be “genuine” as far as the artist is concerned. Perhaps “impossible” is the word; the original subject-tree could be thought of as genuine though. And here I thought it was a painting of a tree! Or very like one. —BRUCE MCRAE Bruce’s internal dialogue, the language and movement of his words, mirrors exactly how one’s two-sided brain might contemplate a work of art. The back and forth, the stretching to figure out the enigma, the stops and starts.

PAINTING TO POEM: FINDING THE STORY FOR ALL THE GREAT AMERICAN PAINTERS ARE STORYTELLERS WHOSE PLOTS ARE GIVEN IN A SINGLE SETTING, ALL AT ONCE.

—Wesley McNair (2003, 16) Barb, whom you read about in “Occasions for Friendship,” not only loves the word but also has an enviable gift for memorization. She has memorized poems easily from an early age and says them when the spirit moves her. In the preschool she founded, she taught young children to say lines and rhymes. But she didn’t write any poems of her own until her sixty-fifth year, when life lessons inspired her to find poems and to write. Art became her muse. Sitting on the summer porch one day, she leafed through a collection of modern masterpieces and stopped at Edward Hopper’s “Cape Cod Evening” (Figure 5). As in his other figure paintings, the characters seem captured just before or after the highpoint of the scene. In this work, an example of one of Hopper’s “couples” paintings, we see an older couple with their dog in the backyard. The man sits on the step, gesturing to the dog who looks away from them. The woman stares down at the man, unsmiling, her arms folded tightly to her chest. The vivid colors and deep shadows, their subtle interaction, create a drama layered with emotion. When Barb meditated on “Cape Cod Evening,” she was reminded of a narrative of her own. Barb wrote an internal dialogue from the point of view of the female character in the painting. Here is her poem. .

CAPE COD EVENING (from a painting of the same title by Edward Hopper) He talks to his editor. He talks to his manuscripts. He talks to the dog. But he wont talk to me. Yes or no is not a conversation. Neither is eye-rolling or sighing although both are rife with meaning. I stand within afoot of him where he sits on the stoop holding out a ball. He draws his lips together and makes a smooching sound inviting the dog to a game of fetch. “Come on, sweet girl,” he coaxes. How long since those lips were used to entice me?

The dog, however, is not so easily seduced. Her attention is focused on the woods at the edge of the yard. She darts off toward the treeline, disappearing into the dusk. He remains where he is—a stone on a stoop— while evening shadows finger their way through the seagrass toward us. Who will he talk to now? —BARBARA CALDWELL

FIGURE 5

Cape Cod Evening by Edward Hopper You can also see the painting Cape Cod Evening, along with someone else’s inspired poem, in Jan Greenberg’s (2008) Side by Side, a book of ekphrastic poetry.

PAINTING TO POEM: STUDENTS ENTERING A PAINTING

I place a watercolor scene called Winter Light (Figure 6) on the classroom easel. At this time, the poem on front was not part of the scene. Jeremy, the teacher, gathers his class on the carpet in front of the painting. I gaze at it and remain silent as sixth graders look too. In a moment, I say that poets are always looking for new poems. We get inspiration from our everyday world. And from what others create. So today we will let a painting be our muse, our inspiration for a new poem. Students observe Winter Light and comment on what they notice and what they think. Jeremy prints their ideas on a chart: “Blinding sun.” “Sun bright snow.” “White light.” “Sun lights up woods.” “Purple shadows.” “Dark snow, light snow.” “Hills in a mist.” “Feels warm yet cold.” “Straight leafless trees spread out across field.” “Frozen stream.” “Snow crusted at edge of stream.” “Water barely moving.” “Black ice.”

FIGURE 6

Winter Light by Shirley McPhillips Taking time for observation is important. When we allow students to push past the obvious, when we wait long enough for thoughts to be stretched out, surprises often bubble up. As we go, we help students extend what they notice, find more details, perhaps give a simile. We want

the students to build on each other’s observations, to use interesting language. We chart some of their unique words and sound combinations over a few days. And, thinking of a poem to come, we ask them to jot in their notebooks from the chart. If, eventually, students can use some of these phrases in their poems, fantastic. Some will use them as a springboard, to push off into new places. (I often begin a poem writing off a word, or a line. Letting it take me someplace.) Eventually, I ask the students to “enter” the painting. I tape a figure of a child sitting on the snowbank near the stream and ask them to imagine they are that person. Look around. What do you see? What sounds do you hear? How do you feel? How do you come to be here? What surprises you? As you sit in this place, what are you thinking? What do you wonder? What can you imagine? What question(s) do you have? Two or three students say a few things orally in response, just enough to get the juices flowing. And we marvel over what they say. Once students notice a couple of intriguing things, make a few interesting word choices, we send them off to continue this work individually in their notebooks. As students begin to draft over the next few days, we suggest they might try starting with an image of where they are in the painting, then move from image to, perhaps, what they’re seeing, feeling, thinking. They may end with a meditative thought, or a question, or a new observation. Jeremy, to demonstrate, writes his first line quickly on the chart and talks us past that. He emphasizes that there are no strict rules, he will play with it. “I sit on a bank of snow …” Then he’s going to look all around for details, and wonder. He might allow the painting to help him remember something in his own experience, not necessarily to recount that but in order to get in touch with his feelings. We confer with each writer over time for image, word choice, and structure. Sharing and having conversation throughout the composing process—about one’s thinking behind decisions, about poetic tools being used and their effects, about words and the tone they create —is supportive and instructive. Students need to see and experience poems being made. From my observation and belief, the best student work happens when the teacher has thought through a possible process for the project—how we might get from here to there—being open for change and working, chunk by chunk, on his own writing in front of and alongside the students. There are several examples of this as well in other sections. It will be helpful also, with Winter Light as the muse, to have read, and to have close by, other image-based poems for examples of craft. Jeremy, the teacher, and his students Laurel and Xian wrote the following poems off Winter Light. WINTER DREAM I sit on a bank of snow caught between the white hot of the sun and the cold shadows of silent trees.

The stream whispers, “You are not alone.” —JEREMY WINTER WOODS Nobody heard my boots crunch. No birdsongs echo here. No sunshine melts the piles of snow. No leaves rustle the air. But tiny tracks run in circles around the trees. —LAUREL December morning— the light from a blazing sun ripples the frozen stream. It still sings. —XIAN

ANCIENT ART TO POEM: STUDENT SOCIAL SCIENTISTS AT WORK It’s hard to see how one can write poetry without reading poems. And reading outside the discipline further nurtures our poem making. Erika keeps this in mind as she works with her fifth-grade social scientists. Early one year they looked closely at how uncovered art and other objects could teach about a people, their culture, and their value system. They “read” paintings, tools and weapons, documents and jewelry, asking themselves who crafted these, why, and what were they used for. They wrote their thoughts quickly in their notebooks. Studying the Minoan period (early Greece), they came across some frescoes. Knowing they would see a glorious one at the Metropolitan Museum of Art later on a field trip, Erika wanted students to be inspired, to do some deeper thinking. Using the same phrases they were accustomed to when reading any texts, students jotted in free form: I notice … This makes me think … I want to add … Some wrote in prose, but more and more, because they liked the

poem form from previous experience, students began to express their feelings about art—about the stories in the art—in poetry. Students looked at war weapons and armor during early Greek rule. They discussed a specific war helmet, intricately designed. They noticed how beautiful the designs were and wondered why craftsmen would spend so much time on something that eventually would end up on the head of a dead soldier. They talked about how art mimics life. If this culture went to war for survival, “respected” the art of war, then helmets, swords, and chariots would be designed and crafted in grandeur. Around this time, Erika knew that she wanted some poems out of this work, so she called attention to students who were already writing preliminary poems in their notebooks. She nudged them along a bit so they could serve as models for how to apply speech to what is silent. Erika spoke to the class. “We know,” she said, “that the best kind of work is when we are elbow deep, sifting through ideas, talking and reading and writing to learn. The real work of scientists and writers—and people going through life—is to make sense of what they see.” She asked the students to look back at the Minoans, their art, and get to a deeper place, a more knowing place. Months later, they sat with their notebooks in front of exquisite pieces of art at the museum—asking questions, linking ideas. Figures 7 and 8 show two student examples. At the Met, notebooks in hand, students were encouraged to “look out” for artifacts that spoke to them or made them think in a different way. They noticed small details, forced themselves to have a thought, and eventually crafted their ideas into a piece of writing. Mia was fascinated by a Greek warrior shield. Here’s her eventual poem.

FIGURE 7

“I Notice” by Mia

FIGURE 8

“Studies” by Aarathi Beautiful and powerful warrior. Bronze carved shield, horses on hind legs ready to advance shows the enemy his strength, his brutality. The time and circumstance it must have taken, the creation of something so beautiful for a battle so brutal. Thousands of citizens

rely on the win, city-states must stay strong just as the bearer of this art must stand, and his shield must remain. I wonder how many swords have been stopped. Who stands behind it, ready to die for something bigger. In case you’re thinking, “But wait. We don’t live near a world-class museum. This would be impossible.” There is art to be found. Of course, we would like objects and works to see in person and touch, but photos of art and artifacts work too. Art books and the Internet are endless sources for all types of art. Many world-class. And many students and teachers nowadays work with their iPads at the ready. You can access collections online, for example, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (http://www.metmuseum.org), and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (http://www.moma.org/). And search engines such as Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com) are helpful for finding museums, galleries, and exhibitions online.

FINGERPRINTS TO POEM: STUDENT SCIENTISTS AT WORK Jason, a fifth-grade teacher, writes that the fingerprint poems idea came when he was driving to work thinking about the science lesson for the day. In this experience, students would examine their fingerprints under hand lenses. “I thought about working poetry into it (always a hope) and about how although my fingerprint is unique to me, it can’t really tell you much about me at all. We talked about the idea in class and gave it a go!” Jason worked on his poem alongside the students and projected his—and others’— revisions on the whiteboard as they went from day to day. Poems being made. Figure 9 shows one of Jason’s early drafts. Here is his final revised poem: INTERROGATION My fingerprints are unique to me, the concentric curves like a brand. But what this inky signature cannot reveal

is that I have laughed— crashed an orange Huffy into the dirt on Springmont Hill, listened to my black dog, Willy, howl, asked a stranger at the end of a wire whether his refrigerator was running. I have sung sweet songs of God at Brook Hollow Church and soft lullabies over a crib at dusk— Hush, little baby, don’t say a word. And I have danced— moonwalked, white-socked, across mama’s linoleum floor, foxtrotted, black-slacked, in my wedding banquet hall. My fingerprint is not very deep, deeper is the gray in my eyes. —JASON PARKHURST Crafting Fingerprint Poems

If you look at Jason’s draft and the final poem side by side, you will see some deft crafting. His observations and decisions about his own work instructs him in working with students.

FIGURE 9

Jason’s Draft of His Fingerprint Poem What We Can Learn from the Way Jason Crafted His Fingerprint Poem

• He saved the title for last. The final title is called “Interrogation.” That suggests looking into a question, getting deeper. (See “Titles Leading Us into a Poem” in Part 2 and “Line by Line” earlier in Part 3 for more on titles.) • The first stanza sets up the focus of the “Interrogation.” A belief the speaker has. Nothing changed except dropping “on me.” It didn’t “sound right” after “to me” in the first line. “Brand” is a strong line ending. • The next three stanzas list specific details about what his fingerprints cannot show about his life. He divided “laughed / sung / danced” into stanzas. White space between each set of images makes it easier to read and contemplate. He has changeding verb endings to -ed to make the action stronger: crashing to crashed; asking to asked, and so forth. • In the last stanza, he gives a meditative thought. This is nice coming after some white space. He took out “In the end.” It added nothing, and now the final sentiment seems stronger. “… in my eye” sounded odd, so a change to “eyes.” • He shifted away from the more traditional way of starting each line with a capital letter. He quieted the grammatical mind that makes us want to end-stop each line, and instead spilled

over in the informal flow of a conversation. Adam, a student in Jason’s class, followed a similar structure for writing his poem about fingerprints. Perhaps he found a way to proceed by watching his teacher’s thinking and decision making “in medias res” (in the middle of doing it). Adam jotted in his notebook about where one might find the “real” Adam. Adam’s early draft appears in Figure 10.

FIGURE 10

Adam’s Draft of His Fingerprint Poem Here is Adam’s final poem: THE REAL ME You won’t find me in my fingerprint like you will in my emotions. Excited, my adrenaline pumps.

I hide in the bushes, waiting to give my sister the scare of her life. Nervous, I creep downstairs to the kitchen for just one more piece of chocolate. Loving, on Christmas morning, I give my Mom the necklace she always wanted. The best place to find me is in my heart. Adam’s original title, “Fingerprint Poem,” sounded like a label for the assignment. “The Real Me” is mysterious enough to make us want to read and is the central thought. This title and the first stanza set us up right away with a mystery. Then, like his teacher, he sites each emotion followed by a very specific, extended image. He kept the poem in the present tense —“hides,” “creeps,” “gives”—that lends a sense of immediacy. He took away the little word —as—that didn’t add anything and tended to weaken the line. Pumping became pumps. Then, also like Jason, he ends with a summary stanza that resolves the mystery. And he’s right. A fingerprint couldn’t have shown us Adam, a fun, sensitive, and caring young man.

PAINTINGS AND POEMS: A COLLABORATION PAINTING IS SILENT POETRY, AND POETRY IS PAINTING WITH THE GIFT OF SPEECH. —Simonides (in Plutarch, 346F) Collaboration can enrich any art, any artist, and take them further into new territory. Admired poet Doris Rosenthal (2013) collaborated with her husband, Eli, an equally admired watercolorist, on a book called Duets: Poems and Paintings. This book is a collection of a few of the cards they’ve made and sent to family and friends over the years from various pleasurable spots. In some cases Eli’s watercolor served as a muse for Doris. And sometimes Doris’s poem inspired Eli. Many times Doris played the role of art director, suggesting layouts

or typefaces. Other times Eli wore the poet’s hat and came up with just the right word for the poem (“The title of the book was my word,” says he, with a twinkle). Figure 11 shows Eli’s watercolors and Doris’s poem “The Great Blue Heron.” Like Eli and Doris, I can envision students sitting together, holding a sketchbook, some sketches, a painting, or a photo, a notebook, a poem, creating something new. Perhaps they’ve had an experience together, or a deep interest, and now they combine their perspectives through art and writing. A deeper study. Eli’s painting and Doris’s poem could be inspiration for all of us.

FIGURE 11

Eli Rosenthal’s Watercolors and Doris Rosenthal’s Poem “The Great Blue Heron”

INSPIRATION OFF THE WALL: A COLLABORATION WE’RE ALWAYS WORKING WITH CHOREOGRAPHERS AND DIRECTORS, ROBOTICS EXPERTS AND DIFFERENT KINDS OF SCIENTISTS AND RESEARCHERS. WE’RE ALWAYS INTERESTED IN THE LINKS AND CROSSOVERS BETWEEN DISCIPLINES. —Elizabeth Diller (in Dushkes 2012, 108) At a weeklong art exhibit called Off the Wall: A Dance / Art Event, poet Molly Frederick spied Alfred Thomas’s pastel of three white birds titled Passers By. Lost in her gazing, she remembered as a child her grandparents’ farm, being free to roam, everything in nature resonating. She remembered Emily Dickinson (1960): “Nature the Gentlest Mother Is.” One evening, a friend and choreographer, inspired by Molly’s poem, “waded” with a group of dancers across a silk ribbon of “water” in the exhibition room while Molly, holding a large white feather, said her poem. INSPIRED BY THE PASTEL WORK BY ALFRED THOMAS TITLED

“PASSERS BY” So many works of art. The eye now sees what the mind saw. Movement caught. Colors trapped—set free. Shapes remembered, laid out before us. Time captured, before it becomes another time. Just over there, what attracts my eye … Three white birds: Egrets? Cranes? Storks? Osprey? (Does it matter?) wading in a summer stream. Bold eyes, strong beaks. Coolness of water against long slim legs. Water passing between knees (if birds have knees). Water. And Birds. White birds A sunny day— bird shadows in water. Throats elegant, bent smooth: Readiness. Their day must hold many such scenes— transitions, transcendent moments. White birds, gentle flow of water, between green banks. The artist saw, remembered. Hands touched the idea of water, ofsoft feathers. Of life. My eyes, my mind, these birds fulfilling their day. You, me, us together! A simple scene, seen here. For us.

Do you see the white birds? Can you imagine what they will do next? —MOLLY FREDERICK Someone is inspired to paint. A painting inspires a poet. A poem inspired by a painting inspires a choreographer and then some dancers. The poet puts her words into the air. Dancers move to the music of the words. We watchers, we listeners, are moved, changed. Imagination. Creation. Translations. Re-creation.

STUDENT COLLABORATION: CLAY TO POEM Sanjay’s classroom teacher, in collaboration with the art teacher, asked students to admire each other’s clay pieces exhibited around the room for “Spring Fling”: bowls, animals, vases (with fresh flowers), abstractions. Each artist created a placemat for the art and a descriptive card. Sanjay liked his friend Nikki’s coiled snake and asked her if he could write a poemcard to stand beside her snake. Feeling strong ownership of her work, but not wanting to hurt Sanjay’s feelings, she allowed as how they could collaborate. They sat together, shared snake stories, Nikki’s ideas about her art, and Sanjay’s reaction to it. Here is his poemcard:

FROM FIDDLE TO POEM: SONIC ART MY POETRY, I SHOULD THINK, HAS BECOME THE WAY OF MY GIVING OUT WHAT MUSIC

IS WITHIN ME.

—Countee Cullen (in Ikonne 1981, 148) Ever since there have been poems, composers have set them to music. And ever since there have been poets, music has been a muse for the word. In some classrooms students write to a background of music turned low. It seems to soothe the soul. Settle the mind. Perhaps, in some cases, it can cut through to emotions, memories, images. Background music can serve these purposes; listening to music with focused attention can serve others. Matt would agree. He grew up in the hill country of West Virginia and often tells his ninth graders stories about how his parents could pick up a guitar, a banjo, or sit at the piano and play and sing, in harmony. He tells the class about the long tradition of composers setting poems to music, of poets drawing inspiration from music. They were going to be part of this tradition. They would make new art. Inspired, as thousands were, by the music in Ken Burns’s iconic PBS documentary The Civil War, Matt purchased it. The music came out ofJay Unger and Molly Mason’s Ashokan Fiddle and Dance Camps, in the Catskills of New York. Matt and his students listened to a song each day over a week or so, vocal and instrumental, drinking in the sounds, the tempos, the rhythms. Students talked and jotted about such questions as, How does this piece make you feel? How would you describe that feeling? What are you picturing in your mind as you listen to this piece? If this were background music to something you remember seeing or doing, what would that be? If you were working on a poem right now, how would this piece help you think about the sound of your words? About the tone of your poem? About the length of your lines? About the tempo, or pace, of your poem? Might the poem you’ve started be different writing in the wake of this new piece of music today? How? Matt reminded the students that they weren’t writing about the music or song. But what the music evoked in them—made them think about, picture, remember, imagine, feel to be true. After a few weeks of workshop intensity, they were ready to read their poems with an Unger and Mason instrumental undulating beneath the words. Aaron’s poem: I’M JUST FIDDLIN’ plucking, tapping, circling round and swing. I’m just fiddlin’ jiggling jogging not worrying ’bout a thing.

Janie’s poem: COUNTRY GIRL DREAMING A girl sits under a willow tree small as a pebble on the river shore she wraps herself in a shawl of dreams and waltzes to a violin.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES FOR ART FACING ART Buchwald, Emilie, and Ruth Roston, eds. 1991. Mixed Voices: Contemporary Poems About Music. Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed. Ehrenworth, Mary. 2003. Looking to Write. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. (Shares her work with students learning to look at art and write in response.) Flynn, Nick, and Shirley McPhillips. 2000. “Just Being Enough: Writing Off Photographs.” In A Note Slipped Under the Door: Teaching from Poems We Love. Portland, ME: Stenhouse. (An entire chapter (7) of information and teaching strategies for writing off photographs.) ——. 2000. “The Image.” In A Note Slipped Under the Door: Teaching from Poems We Love. (Chapter 2.) Fragos, Emily, ed. 2009. Music’s Spell: Poems About Music and Musicians. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. (Shares the tradition of poets writing on great works of art. Ekphrastic poems and the story behind the making of a painting or poem.) Greenberg, Jan, ed. 2008. Side by Side: New Poems Inspired by Artfrom Around the World. New York: Harry Abrams. ——, ed. 2001. Heart to Heart: New Poems Inspired by Twentieth-Century American Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams. (A collection of art from around the world and poems written in response to them.) Hirsch, Edward. 1994. Transforming Vision: Writers on Art. Boston: Bulfinch. (Art facing art.) Kumin, Maxine. 2000. “A Way of Staying Sane.” In Always Beginning: Essays on a Life in Poetry. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon. (Poet comes to terms with a film’s power

over her by writing a poem.) Rosenthal, Doris. 2012. Duets. Lexington, KY: A Little Card Company. (A collection of watercolor/poem cards she and her husband have collaborated on and sent to family and friends over the years.) Wright, Charles. 1991. “Edvard Munch.” In Country Music: Selected Early Poems. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. (Poet writes in response to Munch’s The Scream.) Online Links

Kenny, Adele. 2011b. “Poetry Prompt # 79: From Painting to Poem.” The Music in It (blog). http://adelekenny.blogspot.com/2011/11/poetry-prompt-79-from-painting-to-poem.html. (Poetry confronting art and notes on ekphrasis.) Morrison, Valerie. 2013. “Ekphrastic Poetry.” http://valerie6.myweb.uga.edu/ekphrasticpoetry.html. (Many examples of paintings to poems.) Smithsonian Education. 1998. “Collecting Their Thoughts: Using Museums as Resources for Writing.” Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies. http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/educators/lesson_plans/language_arts.html.

PUTTING ON THE MASK: PERSONA POEMS

BABA YAGA ADVISES RED RIDING HOOD I’ve charmed snakes, sung to wolves, hummed thunder and spit rain. No one can claim I’ve had a dull life. I’m nobody’s wife and no one’s Grandma. Don’t come by my roost looking for fresh-baked pie or warm cookies. I’ll give you fire if you bargain fair and even a lock of my steely ha ir but you won’t get a hug from me … —Lana Hechtman Ayers (2010, 9)

THE DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE As writers we’ve been coached in the adage, “Write about what you know.” But writers of the dramatic monologue, also called the persona poem, put on the mask, dream up some drama, and sometimes get a little nutty. It seems wild and creative. And it is. It also involves some thoughtful and focused work. “What you know,” and can find out, becomes important. What you can imagine becomes critical. In a persona poem, we aren’t writing about another character, we are writing as if we were that other character. Many actors in ancient Greek dramas wore masks to establish a persona. Robert Browning’s poems in the Victorian era became a model for the dramatic monologue form. His work influenced twentieth-century poets such as Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, and, later, Sylvia Plath, John Ashbery, and John Berryman. In his poem “Night, Death, Mississippi,” Robert Hayden “adopts the shocking persona of an aging Klan member listening … to the sounds of a lynching outside, but too feeble to join …

The effect of reading the casual violence of the poem is more devastating than any commentary the poet could have provided” (Academy of American Poets 2013). Hayden went on to dramatize other historical figures, such as Phillis Wheatley and Nat Turner.

WHO’S WEARING THAT MASK? We use the term persona because the author invents the “speaker” of the poem. The “I” in the poem is a fictional character. One could write in the voice of Lady Liberty, a cave painter, the Little Mermaid, or Ralph Waldo Emerson. With a cast of characters, past, present and imaginary to choose from, the creative possibilities are endless. The writer gets to create a character with something on his or her mind—choose the tone, the voice, the attitude—situate the character in a place, a moment in time, and let the character have his or her say. As we’ve seen from the examples given so far, the tone can be whimsical and fantastic, dramatic and disturbing, or something in between. When we describe what another character might feel, we practice the skill of analysis; we employ the ability to empathize.

PERSONA AS FAQADE We all wear masks. The enlightened conversationalist when we’re at an intimate dinner party, the contrite-repentant when we’re asking forgiveness for the parking ticket, the erudite, incontrol authority when we’re speaking to a room full of parents at back-to-school night. These masks allow us to negotiate the world we live in. A mask can help the poet express issues of power the writer might not feel he or she has. Or the writer can give power and voice to those characters, past and present, whom the writer feels were deserving but deprived of it. Loved poet Lucille Clifton used personae to address wrongs done to others, especially women, in past generations. In The Book of Light (1992), for example, through heroes and antiheroes she celebrates and mourns the African American experience while connecting with all that it means to be human. Her characters have conversations: poet to reader, Satan to God, speaker to Clark Kent. Anne Turner (1993), in Grass Songs, wrote seventeen poems in first person. She was inspired by the letters and diaries of women moving westward with their families in covered wagons. Turner said in the introduction to the book, “I wanted to give voice to these women as they journeyed West, as they cared for children under impossible conditions, as they formed communities in the wilderness” (1993, ix). In Stories I Ain’t Told Nobody Yet, Jo Carson (1989) wrote a collection of monologues and dialogues, distillations from conversations she overheard in and around the rich minefield of her native Appalachia. In the vernacular of the region we hear folks going about their everyday lives—storytelling, lamenting, arguing, ranting, wondering, questioning, dreaming, despairing, giving advice, truth telling. All of them wanting, demanding, to be heard. Sometimes in a persona poem, the poet chooses a character that represents his or her inner self. The poet can express feelings, beliefs, and opinions without fear because it’s the created

character who is speaking. (See “Dealing with Difficulty” in Part 2 to read again Emily’s intimate persona poem.)

PERSONA IN THE CLASSROOM: FINDING A VOICE WRITING A PERSONA POEM LETS YOU PRETEND TO BE SOMEONE ELSE FROM THE INSIDE OUT. —Mary Alexandra Agner (2012) Whenever we want to learn more about writing in a certain genre, it’s good to check with other writers who love what they do and do it with passion. Mary Alexandra Agner (2012) graciously shares her process for writing persona poems. In her poem “The Godmother Limit,” she writes in the persona of a fairy godmother who spends her life pleasing others. I include her whole statement here because it’s great to use with students who are preparing to write persona poems. Have you ever wanted to feel what it’s like to stand on the moon? A persona poem in the voice of a past astronaut, like John Glenn, or a future astronaut you make up, could explore the moon itself, the dust, the different gravity, or the feelings that come when you see the Earth from space: fear, excitement, amazement. You have two resources for persona poems: research and imagination. If I were to write a poem about standing on the moon, I would begin with research, to feed my imagination. I would listen to recordings of astronauts, watch movies of them, read books about their lives, training, families. I would look up information about moon rocks—maybe touch one at a museum!—moon gravity, moon temperature. Then I would listen to everything I had learned. Most times, I will hear a voice and rush to write it down. But if that doesn’t happen, I take a quotation, a sentence, and chop off the end, then write the ending myself, using everything I can from what I’ve learned. (I can always cut things out when I revise.) I do my best to write like that person and not myself, no matter if the persona is an astronaut or a fairy godmother. Writing like a fairy godmother meant I had to pretend to be elderly and creaky, but also to have spent my whole life making other people happy. I wondered if the fairy godmother got tired of that. And what might she say, if she were tired of her job? (Agner 2012) Erika and CK, working together with their fifth-grade classes, used Agner’s notes to begin a discussion of persona with the students. Like all good teacher-mentors, they demonstrated their process along the way. Erika was interested in a lesser character named Will Rogers, John Henry’s older brother, in the book Freedom Summer by Deborah Wiles (2005). He doesn’t

speak a word in the story, but there’s lots of evidence to imagine what he might be thinking and experiencing emotionally. It takes some deep reading and intuiting. In Freedom Summer, the 1964 Civil Rights Act has been passed. Best friends Joe (who is white) and John Henry (who is black) head to the new integrated town pool together to find it closed and a crew, including Will Rogers, laying asphalt over it. Erika imagined how Will Rogers must have felt, looking up from the sticky tar at his devastated younger brother. He looks at them and “points back on down the road—it means, Git on home! … His face is like a storm cloud, and I know this job has made him angry” (Wiles 2012). From this piece of text, and other information, Erika empathizes with Will Rogers, his tired, hopeless, angry feeling as he issues a stark, nonverbal warning to his brother. Figure 12 shows her persona poem draft.

FIGURE 12

Erika’s Two-Page Draft of “Git on Home” CK chose to speak as Maime Trotter from The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson (2004). Again, instead of choosing an obvious main character, Gilly, CK felt it would be interesting to explore another character, the foster mother, who would have triggering issues, issues that ignite action or emotion. He would have to reread and research Trotter: her hopes and dreams, beliefs, fears, problems, speaking style. He did a lot of this work in his notebook

and in front of the students as they worked on their own characters. One day CK said, “Today I’ll be talking about finding a place in the literature to let your voice loose.” He turned to a section in the book and read the part where Gilly overhears a conversation in which the social worker says to Trotter: “Mother? Foster mother? What’s the difference?” That’s a place where CK felt Trotter’s voice wanted to “cut loose.” He directed students to find and jot down those telling moments in their characters’ lives. The places where their voices would be strong. And they would try out several in their notebooks. This is CK’s persona poem: WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE? Mother? Foster mother? What’s the difference. I know the child didn’t come from me but the good lord sent her to me. And as long as she is under my roof, she is my child. And yes Lord knows, I need her. I like to die when I found her gone. But I do not smother my children with my needs. They are free to stay or go. But as sure as they know there are cookies baking in my oven my children will know there is love in this house. Mia, a student in CK’s class, is moved by the book Wonder by R. J. Palacio (2012). The main character, August, was born with a congenital facial deformity. After being

homeschooled, his parents decide to send him to a regular middle school. He wants to be “ordinary,” but his classmates can’t get past his face. The story is told from different people’s points of view. Mia decides to try on the voice of Via, August’s sister. She writes pages in her notebook trying to find that voice (Figure 13). Speaking with her teacher, they question, “As Via, am I being too nice? Too understanding of the situation? Or do I have feelings that are different underneath? Do I feel okay with all that’s going on?” That’s when Mia, as Via, realizes that deep down she was resenting all the attention going to August (Figure 14). She thinks of Grandma, the only one who really listened to her. And Grandma is gone. So she visits her grave to have a much-needed talk (Figure 15).

FIGURE 13 (ABOVE)

Mia tries to find Via’s voice.

FIGURE 14 (RIGHT)

Mia digs under the surface of Via’s emotions.

FIGURE 15

Mia’s character, Via, talks to Grandma. Here’s Mia’s final poem. As Via, she stands at Grandma’s grave and speaks to her. I look down at grandma’s grave to make sure she’s listening. I know he’s different I understand but I need someone to love me more I need a chance to just… break away from the whole August thing and have some people take a second maybe a millisecond and give their attention to me I close my eyes holding back tears holding back black rain. After my friends have seen August they never come back to my house. Miranda my best friend pretty much ditched me. Justin, the guy I like, well, I’m afraid to show him my family. Grandma! You’re the only one

who paid attention to me.

PERSONA IN THE CLASSROOM: EXPLORING THE CHARACTER In order to guide his students better through the process, Jay, another fifth-grade teacher—and colleague of Erika’s and CK’s—wanted to try out his own persona poem, to find and research a character, to find his voice. He wrote about his process (Figure 16), including a chart fleshing out the character (Figure 17).

FIGURE 16

Jay wrote about his process for exploring and writing his persona poem. Figure 18 shows Jay’s final persona poem. I think you will agree that his research, his deep reading of the character, paid off for him as a writer and as a teacher of writers. If you watch the movie The Outsiders, listen for Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”

FIGURE 17

Jay used a chart to explore his character for a persona poem.

FIGURE 18

Jay’s Final Persona Poem, “Feelin’ Gold”

CRAFTING NEFERTITI Another student named Mia took her time finding a character. She eventually selected and explored Nefertiti. A fraction of her thoughtful work is shown in Figures 19 through 21.

FIGURE 19

Mia’s Chart Exploring Nefertiti

FIGURE 20

Mia’s Scenes

FIGURE 21

Mia’s Early Notebook Draft of “Nefertiti” Let’s compare Mia’s early notebook draft to the typed draft (Figure 22) to see what kind of thinking and revising she did.

FIGURE 22

Mia’s Typed Draft of “Nefertiti”

FIGURE 23

Mia’s Final Version of “Nefertiti” Mia searched, by using the chart and trying out scenes, to find a moment in the life of Nefertiti that would suggest the attitude she, Mia as Nefertiti, would take in the persona poem. That attitude would influence the tone of her voice. Notice that early on Mia wrote in tight lines, column-like. Her style. No stanzas yet. When she read aloud, she heard where breaks seemed right and drew lines to indicate stanzas. Stanza one established her persona. “I was once” set up a mystery; something will change. This stanza stayed the same throughout drafts except for the specification of “Egypt” instead of “country” in the last line. In the next stanzas we understand that Nefertiti has been rejected and is bitterly disappointed, but readers haven’t learned much about her persona and just how powerful she was. Mia went back to her notebook to work out several images to show how Nefertiti was regarded. Part of her legacy. Having done a lot of background work, Mia would think more about the poem she was making. At this point, instead of going straight from stanza one into being “thrown to the jackals” (a great phrase that sounds dated), we get several lovely images of Nefertiti and sense the beauty for which she was renown. Mia uses similes and strong verbs: like an ibis, wading; glimmers on the necks. Alliteration: woman, worshipped; wading, waters; setting sun. Assonance: elegant, neck; filled, with; like, ibis, Nile. Consonance: elegant, like, Nile;

necklace, glimmer, all. Internal rhyme: banquet, necks. Stanza six, after being placed in various positions in the notebook work, finally found a spot. A delectable line, a perfect metaphor. The character’s voice delivers a strong sense of her power in terms that suit the times, “the reeds of my people.” We hear her elegance and sense of position. Then the last stanza, a turn for the end, the demise. “And deserted me.” Strong ending. Plaintive. We can feel the hurt. The final. Yes, when a writer keeps reading over the poem, out loud, something still might rear its head. The first stanza stayed the same. When we read the second stanza aloud, it sounded like her “neck” was wading in the Nile. So a change to “I wade.” The next four stanzas stayed the same. The last stanza was fine, but somehow Mia wanted the drama of being “thrown to the jackals” at the very end. That hard “ck” sound. Nefertiti’s one last exasperated line. Let’s try it, see how it sounds—“and threw me to the jackals.” Boom. It works! Figure 23 shows Mia’s final version.

DEAR WORLD: THE POSTCARD POEM ULTIMATELY, EVERY POEM IS A LOVE POEM. —Wesley McNair (2003, 47) Postcard poems are short, a challenge in itself. They are handwritten and can be hand illustrated as well. Each postcard poem is a gem being sent on a personal journey. We will look at persona postcards in the next section. But first, Tamiko Beyer and Ted Kooser show us the value in writing postcard poems. For students today, postcard writing may seem an ancient art. However, in the Kenyon Review Newsletter, Kundiman poet Tamiko Beyer (2010) writes a piece called “A Poem in My Mailbox: A Family of Writers.” Kundiman is a New York City-based national organization dedicated to the creation and development of Asian American Poetry. To celebrate National Poetry Month a group decided to write and mail a poem a day to each other on a postcard and drop it in the mail. Almost every day a small delight would be waiting for each of them. It was good discipline, Beyer says, but better than that it was a community she felt fortunate to be part of. You can see some of her cards at: http://tamikob.tumblr.com/sent_cards. Kooser’s (2000) book, Winter Morning Walks: One Hundred Postcards to Jim Harrison, is a selected collection of poems. Partly for exercise, partly as a distraction from a recent cancer diagnosis, Kooser returned home each day from his morning walk to write a poem, paste it on a postcard, and mail it to Harrison. He dated each card and gave a brief description of the weather. The poems, just big enough to fit on a postcard, take us through every day with particular insight and wisdom.

NOVEMBER 18 Cloudy, dark and windy. Walking by flashlight at six in the morning, my circle of light on the gravel swinging side to side, coyote, raccoon, field mouse, sparrow, each watchingfrom darkness this man with the moon on a leash. —TED KOOSER (2000, 18)

A Postcard Poem: • is a poem written on a postcard that is either about or not about the picture on the front. • if about the picture, can comment on the picture or be the result of teasing out the story of the place or people shown there. • can be commercial or homemade. • is small enough to fit in the space provided on the postcard.

POSTCARD PERSONA POEMS Inspired by the postcard poem idea, Alex created some variations on the theme for his classroom. He spread out a slew of postcards he’d picked up on his travels and in used bookstores. He asked students to find a postcard that interested them and create a persona for themselves and an addressee. They were to think about such questions as these: Who are you? Where are you writing from? How do you feel about the place you’re in? What do you see when you look around? Who are you writing to? What is your relationship? What’s he or she like? Why are you writing to him or her? What do you want to share with him or her? Who their personas are and how they position themselves will affect the tone of the poem. Alex showed several examples he had written and some he’d found online. Students talked about how writing in a postcard space is unique; it requires precision of thought and word choice. Students studied their postcards, then made notes and drafts in their notebooks. Although most of us don’t spend too much time when we write a postcard (if we do), they weren’t just

writing a snatch of, “How are you? Fine, I hope.” They were to write a poem. Once they were drafting, Alex reminded his students to remember what they already knew about poetry. These poems would be short, tight, and focused. An example is shown in Figure 24. To take it a step further, Alex invited students to design their own postcards. The designs could be abstract or realistic. They began with notebook sketches. If they had someone in mind to send them to, students could create their designs based on some personal connection with that person. Then he passed out blank note cards, and the students finalized their designs. Some were in pencil, others in ink, marker, watercolor, or collage. Poems would come next. Students could adopt a persona and write in that voice, or write an ekphrastic poem, with the postcard design as the “muse.” (See “Poets Facing Art: Ekphrastic Poems” earlier in Part 3.)

FIGURE 24

One Student’s Postcard Poem (Photo courtesy of Blue Crab Chesapeake Charters.)

IF A RIVER COULD SPEAK: GIVING VOICE TO THE INANIMATE I AM THE DESERT. I AM FREE. COME WALK THE SWEEPING FACE OF ME.

—Diane Siebert (1992) At the Logan School in Denver, Colorado, students prepare to enter their persona poems in the River of Words Art and Poetry Contest (http://www.stmarys-ca.edu/center-for-environmentalliteracy/river-of-words/art-poetry-contest). These poems will come out of their study of the great Colorado River. They will give the river a human voice to tell its story. Students acquire background information and inspiration from such experiences as keeping observations in a journal and studying the journal John Wesley Powell kept as he explored the Colorado River on his journey down the Grand Canyon. They will read an excerpt from Patrick McCully’s (2001) “A Short History of Rivers,” brainstorm together, and collect photos and pictures to create a human history of rivers collage. A River of Words: The Persona Poem

Drawing from their experiences during the river study, students have the information and passion they need to write persona poems, letting the river “speak” of its secrets, dreams, hopes, fears. Then-sixth-grader Katie Post won first prize in the 2002 River of Words Art and Poetry Contest for the state of Colorado. Here is her poem: I AM THE HEADWATERS I am the headwaters plunging, and racing down rocky walls, I am the river foaming, rushing over rocks worn smooth at my touch. I am home to the river otter, swimming playfully or snoozing on my banks, I am the carver of the canyons, I am the home of the fish, small and sleek or big and fat. I am the playground of the ducks, I know where I am going and I will get there, I flow slowly, I rush swiftly, I am the commander of the floods, I guide the trickling streams, I am as clear as the wind in the mountains, I never stop my journey to the salty sea, where I

tickle the brightly colored fishes, I am the greatest traveler in the world, if you don’t believe me try and beat me, for I am the river.

MORE VOICES Coles, Katharine. 2011. Blueprints: Bringing Poetry into Communities. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. George, Kristine O’Connell. 1998. Old Elm Speaks. New York: Clarion. Hempel, Amy, ed. 1995. Unleashed: Poems by Writers’ Dogs. New York: Broadway Books. Michael, Pamela, ed. n.d. “Persona Interview.” In River of Words Educator’s Guide: Young Poets and Artists on the Nature of Things. River of Words. http://www.riverofwords.org/pdfs/ROWteachingguide.pdf.

HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU: HOMAGE POEMS

CREATURES OF A DAY! MAN IS MERELY A SHADOW OF A DREAM. BUT WHEN GODGIVEN GLORY COMES UPON HIM IN VICTORY, A BRIGHT LIGHT SHINES UPON US, AND OUR LIFE IS SWEET. —Pindar (1984)

SONG OF PRAISE: THE ODE Recently, Elizabeth Acevedo, at the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress, interviewed poet and professor Aracelis Girmay (2013). Girmay explained that her last name is her father’s first name. “That’s how it works in Tigrinya,” a Semitic language spoken in Eritrea and the Tigray Region of Ethiopia. Her father said “Girmay” is something you would say to someone whom you utterly respect. His parents named him for the hopes they had for their son. Aracelis Girmay wondered, “Might a name be the first ode?” An interesting concept: that one’s name, what someone chooses to call you, honors you, adorns you with hoped-for traits for living. From antiquity, the ode—Greek for “to sing or chant”—was written to honor a person or occasion. Greek poet Pindar (518–438 BC) composed odes full of flattery and exaggeration to praise athletes and statesmen. We can remember the great odes, even if vaguely, from high school or college: Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” or Wordsworth’s “Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” (a title to die for); Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” and “To Autumn.” Some consider his “Ode on a Grecian Urn” the best-known and most-read poem in nineteenth-century literature. By the time these poems were written, the ode was influenced by the sonnet, a much freer form and not so “ceremonial.” With the coming of poetry in free verse, seemingly, the ode world went dark. But modern poets took it up again. The scope of what an ode can be has widened. Pablo Neruda, Chilean diplomat, activist, and Nobel Prize-winning poet, ennobled the everyday with poems such as: “Ode to My Socks,” “Ode to the Tomato,” “Ode to the Dictionary,” “Ode to Olive Oil.” One of my favorites is “Ode to Things”: “I have a crazy, / crazy love of things. / I like pliers, / and scissors. / I love / cups, / rings, / and bowls—/ not to speak, of course, / of hats” (Neruda 1994, 11). Today’s ode can be down to earth and as personally familiar as Gary Soto’s “Ode to the Yard Sale”: “And so they / Come, poking / At the clothes / Lifting salt / And pepper shakers / For their tiny music, / Thumbing through / Old magazines / For someone / They know” (1995, 77–78). Or Barbara Hamby’s “Ode to My 1977 Toyota”: “Engine like a Singer sewing machine, where have you / not carried me—to dance class, grocery shopping, / into the heart of

darkness and back again?” (2004, 69). Sometimes we don’t recognize today’s ode by its title because we can pay homage without calling it an “ode.” Nancy Willard’s “A Hardware Store as Proof of the Existence of God,” pays homage in her lines: “I praise the brightness of hammers pointing east / like the steel woodpeckers of the future …” (1990, 123). And Joy Harjo’s “Perhaps the World Ends Here” celebrates the kitchen table: “At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering / and remorse. We give thanks” (1994, 68). Sometimes it takes whole collections of poems to pay proper tribute. Barbara Juster Esbensen’s (1996) Echoes for the Eye celebrates patterns in nature: spirals, branches, polygons, meanders, circles. That Sweet Diamond is Paul Janeczko’s (1998) homage to baseball. Each poem focuses on an aspect of the game, such as “How to Spit,” “Vendors,” and “Foul Ball.” It ends with “After the Game,” when the “lights go out” and the “ghosts of players” pine for games to come (Janeczko 1998). Today’s odes can still be grand in scope, lifting us up. In 2009, Elizabeth Alexander read her “Praise Song for the Day” at Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration. In it, she celebrated all that we are as a country and sang a “praise song for walking forward in that light” (2009). (Read her inaugural poem at http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20545.)

STUDENTS GIVE PRAISE Ashlynn paid a thoughtful tribute to time, “that elusive being” (Figure 25). In this draft, not her first, Ashlynn lists the virtues of clocks. Thinking about time, keeping in mind what clocks do, what they mean to us, she writes as many metaphors as she can. She extends some metaphoric lines to two or three. She is already aware of poetic language, rhythm, and repetition. The poem doesn’t yet come together as a poem around one idea. Time? Clocks? Figure 26 shows Ashlynn’s final version. Ashlynn now has a strong poem with a thread of thought pulled through from beginning to end. She chooses to speak directly to clocks, as her title indicates. Now clocks are central, controlling, acting on time. Each stanza opens with praiseworthy action or metaphoric praise followed by lines that extend the image. These were disparate lines in her draft. Now they do the work of extending the tribute. You will see the sharp difference when you read aloud the draft, then the final. Feel how the words, the sound, the lineation (lines as they end, and move) move in you.

FIGURE 25

Ashlynn’s Draft of “Ode to Clocks”

FIGURE 26

Ashlynn’s Final Version of “Ode to Clocks”

FIGURE 27

Victoria’s Draft of “Ode to Childhood”

Victoria, a reflective classmate of Ashlynn’s, remembered her early childhood (Figure 27). She chose to pay homage not to an object but to a time in her life. In this draft Victoria is writing a narrative to explore images and occasions that might show her childhood. She speaks using “I.” She knows it’s not a poem yet. It has the makings for a poem. In her final version (Figure 28), Victoria has selected the most powerful memories and turned them into scenes, images, one per stanza. She writes in the present tense, keeping it intimate, immediate. Her tone is carefree and sensuous. Her verbs active, her details particular. She lands (ends) with a meditative thought, paying tribute, feeling gratitude, with a hint of nostalgia. Read it aloud. Feel it.

FIGURE 28

Victoria’s Final Version of “Ode to Childhood”

Suggestions for Exploring Homage Poems in the Classroom • Read a variety of homage poems aloud to hear tone, and sense the intent of the author. • Jot, talk about what you notice regarding title, subject, sound, voice, tone, language, structure. • Ask yourself, How does the writer “praise” the virtues of the subject? • Ask yourself, How does the writer convince us of the subject’s praiseworthiness? • Chart, and jot in your notebook, techniques and poetic devices the writers use to create homage. These will instruct you when you write your own. (You might use the poems suggested or written by students in this section as mentors for your writing.) • Have a preliminary “go” as a class, maybe by looking around the room for ordinary objects (eraser, tissue, pencil, file folder) and brainstorming together their virtues using exaggerated language.

Suggestions for Working on Your Own Homage Poem • List in your notebook ordinary subjects, states of being, places, you’d like to praise. Talk them through with someone. • Pick a subject you think deserves praise but doesn’t usually get it. Write to brainstorm the many virtues of the subject. You might list and then extend the list, or write as narrative. • Write to exaggerate (use hyperbole) these virtues. Take it over the top, but keep it “serious.” • Write scenes, images. Use words, simile, metaphor (description), action, to convince the reader of the subject’s virtues. • Draft your poem for major effect on the reader. Read aloud continually as you revise. • Look back at structure of mentor homage poems for line endings, white space, sound. Revise. • Read aloud. Revise. Revise. Read aloud. Revise. • Stop when your poem, read aloud, “feels right” and “sounds right.”

INVITING THE MUSE: INVOCATION NOWADAYS, THE MUSES ARE HARD TO FIND. —Lee Siegel (2009) Yet occasionally the muses can still be nudged out of hiding. The characters in poet Denise Levertov’s poem “Invocation,” soon to leave their house and hoping to return, appeal to Lares, who in ancient Greek myths was considered guardian of the household: “Don’t leave … Guard its profound dreams for us” (1987, 101). In paying homage to the house the speaker delivers an invocation to Lares. The “invocation,” then, is a plea or petition for support, guidance, or inspiration. In Greek mythology, muses were thought to be the source of inspiration for science, history, literature, and the arts. Poets today may invoke traditional mythological figures of the past. But they also might call upon some benevolent spirit within an object, a situation, a time, to nourish the artist’s inner fire. Writers composing an invocation might search for objects that have a quality we would like,

that we feel we need. What is it? Name it. Then petition the object or the spirit within the object for guidance, support, or inspiration in bringing this quality your way. In poemcrazy, Susan Wooldridge mentions a friend who brings a large roll of butcher paper and colored pencils and crayons to a writing workshop. “People sketch their objects and write their poems beside the drawing to create a colorful ‘invocation mural’” (1996, 112). Invocation at the End of Summer

Here is an example of how an invocation worked for me. One late summer in upstate New York, sitting on a hill near the farmhouse, I longed for the kind of energy and solace nature can give—a state of being. I wrote a poem to invoke “the spirit of summer’s end.” The muse took me a long way into winter: INVOCATION AT THE END OF SUMMER I call on the spirit of summer’s end, of tangled roots and the earth’s mold. Give me your hum. I call on things that thrive in byways— snakeroot, aster, dock. The teasel that pricks, the pod that slips away. Give me light, charged with a flush of quick shadows—the sun stretched flat across the grass, sullen, satisfied. Let me feast on the overripeness of things, the spice of apple that dazzles wasps and spins deer in drunken staggers over the field. Give me your heat. I call on things that sweeten and fall— butternut, pippin, the fluttering hearts of rosebud—the luscious drip of evening, a shuddering of birds rising up and settling, the last secrets of the katydid.

Let me put my head among the leaves. Let me listen. —SHIRLEY MCPHILLIPS (2013)

A FEW MORE BOOKS AND POEMS OF INVOCATION AND PRAISE Kenyon, Jane. 1996. “Let Evening Come.” In Otherwise: New and Selected Poems. St. Paul, MN: Graywolf. Neruda, Pablo. 1994. Odes to Common Things. Edited by Ferris Cook. Translated by Ken Krabbenhoft. New York: Little, Brown. Soto, Gary. 1995. “Ode to the Yard Sale.” New and Selected Poems. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. ——. 2005. Neighborhood Odes. New York: HMH Books for Young Readers. Strand, Mark, and Eavan Boland, eds. 2000. The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. New York: W. W. Norton. Wooldridge, Susan G. 1996. poemcrazy: freeing your life with words. New York: Random House.

THE GREAT SHOUT-OUT: INVECTIVE POEMS

THE SWEET MEAT OF POETRY NEEDS A GOOD DAB OF WASABI—YES! —Jeffrey Skinner (2012, 7) In 2008, loved children’s book illustrator Ron Barrett (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, 1978,), drew a panel for Quality Paperback Book’s (QPB) Calendar of Days. It was called “Shakespeare’s Expletives for Everyday Use” (Figure 29). The Shakespearean character goes about modern-day activities angrily telling off everyone he encounters. The delight here is that his tirade is delivered in Elizabethan-style invective language, similar to that found, for example, in Kent’s address to Oswald in The Tragedy of King Lear, II.2. The situation is incongruous, the language startling, the effect hilarious. Invective poetry, popular in ancient Rome, usually involved negative emotional language. It insulted or denounced a person, a topic, or an element of society. David Marsh (2003), professor of Italian at Rutgers University in New Jersey, shows us examples. His book Francesco Petrarca translates into English four of Italian poet Petrarch’s invectives, including “Invective Against a Detractor of Italy” and “Invective Against a Man of High Rank with No Knowledge or Virtue.” Today’s invective poem is mostly good-humored satire; it ridicules, pokes fun at something or someone. Who can forget actor and comedian John Cleese as Mr. Wiggin in Monty Python’s “The Architect Sketch.” When his architectural design is rejected by the “City gents,” he erupts: “Yes, well, of course, that’s just the sort of blinkered Philistine pig-ignorance I’ve come to expect from you non-creative garbage” (Chapman 1989, 221).

FIGURE 29

“Shakespeare’s Expletives for Everyday Use” by Ron Barrett (Ron Barrett © 2009) Geoffrey Nutter, in The Rose of January, expresses some ambivalence about parenting in his “Invective Against Pugs”: “Pugs, so small / and ugly, baby-like / inexplicably decked out / or dolled up in their / little sweaters …” (2013, 101). (See an excerpt of this poem at http://www.gwarlingo.com/2013/the-sunday-poem-geoffrey-nutter/.) Some invective is more serious in nature. Wesley McNair laments farmland falling into the hands of realtors during the 1950s along the Connecticut River: “… peaceful quiet lull of the virgin countryside / that we try to pierce stomp kill with concrete and car horns …” (2012, 55). Poet Diane Lockward has written “Invective Against the Bumblebee.” The speaker is livid at the bee that has “swooped down” on her baby boy, mistaking him for a sunflower. “Now my son knows pain. / Now he fears the grass” (2006, 25).

THE GREAT STUDENT SHOUT-OUT

Chris, whom you’ve met earlier in this book, was over the moon about introducing invective poetry to his students. Who doesn’t feel like railing about something once in a while? One day he called the group together and began with, “Molly, what makes you angry?” He put the question to everyone and got a round of rousing replies that moved the group toward enthusiasm. Then he introduced Lockward’s “Invective Against the Bumblebee.” Because of a “mature” reference or two in the poem, Chris shared the poem orally, reading selected lines and stanzas to show her voice and invective language. In the “style” of Lockward, Chris wrote “Invective Against the Green Flies of Long Beach Island.” Not that this is the only way to vent, of course. They would also read a variety of invectives. But Chris thought this might be a support to begin. One Possible Structure Students Identified from Reading Chris’s Invective Poem

• The first stanza describes the culprit or offender. • The second stanza outlines the offenses. • The third stanza brings forth creative revenge. • The last stanza sums up the poet’s retribution—may you … may you. Then, fired up, students began brainstorming in their notebooks for possibilities for invective: pesticides that poison our food and water, people who always have to be first, test prep that bores and wastes our time. Martha wrote an invective against “mean girls” (Figure 30). She’s got the genre down pat.

FIGURE 30

Martha’s notebook work, “Invective Against Mean Girls” Martha cuts loose in her notebook against “mean girls.” She identifies the culprit, brainstorms offenses that will make us feel what she feels, so we take her side, then lists possible acts of revenge. She puts herself in the place of the “victim” and searches for a strong voice with which to sound off. INVECTIVE AGAINST MEAN GIRLS Walking around like you own the world Snarky comments substituting for manners Flaunting your designer clothes Like badges of honor ones that you’ve awarded to yourself Making friends is your assignment

Secret spilling is your game Back-stabbing, lying, staying “popular” All descriptions of the job You attach yourself to people Too important for them to consider you leaving So when you do They come crying Begging you to be their friend again But you don’t look back May you live out a meaningless life With no achievement to call your own May the people you’ve dumped Haunt you with their successes May the perfect world you’ve built Come crashing down around you May karma knock on your doorstep May your dreams fade into reality May people see you for what you really are A good-for-nothing mean girl In every story there’s a character Who lies to everyone around her Who always gets what she deserves In every story there’s a mean girl Many of us can relate to sibling feistiness, our own or that of our progeny. Molly loves her brother and thought “it would be fun to tease him” with invective. She brainstormed lists of her brother’s “offenses” in her notebook and worked to establish an invective voice. Figure 31 shows an early notebook draft as she pushes her lines into something more poemlike.

FIGURE 31

Molly’s Notebook Draft of “Invective against My Brother” Here is Molly’s final invective poem: INVECTIVE AGAINST MY BROTHER You are younger, so what. You punch and are rewarded. You make me pull my hair out. You make my life miserable. You push me off my bed While I am sleeping. I push, and you cry out for mom. You pinch me. I cry out in agony and yell at you, But I get the reprimand for over reacting.

Ignore you? I try. But you antagonize me, make me crazy. Psycho, MadGirl, Crazy Lady, they call me, All because of you. May you forget your sunscreen on every hot summer day. May all your friends be absent from your championship games. May there only be asparagus and Brussels sprouts on your dinner plate. May you stub your toe on the tile every time you step into the kitchen. May you flip and flop in the deepest parts of the pool. May you one day feel what I feel, And know the truth of who’s to blame. May you one day feel my pain. In revising, Molly has stretched out the offenses, the action, in stanzas two and three. This helps us feel her grievances, helps build up more of a case. She stays in the present tense for immediacy. Short, staccato, end-stopped lines give her voice the snappy, annoyed feeling she needs. Molly works up to an emotional pitch by stanza three, and with the use of caesura (here, a strong pause midline), a strong musical line: “But you antagonize me, make me crazy.” Stanza four is stretched out with more examples of invective. The tone is strong but softened, and with particulars: “May you be burned” is now “May you forget your sun screen …” Lines are more detailed, more realized: “food” becomes “asparagus and Brussels sprouts.” In the last stanza, the addition of line two provides a rhythm that helps her find and add “one day.” The word “blame,” then landing on “pain,” takes our breath away. Read it aloud. Feel it.

WRITING IN THE WAKE OF A POEM

In a way, I feel I write in the wake of every poem I’ve ever heard or read. All the patterns fan out behind them as they move through my consciousness. We know, also, that we can be instructed, intellectually and emotionally, by even one poem that makes its way to our minds and hearts.

REINTERPRETING A POEM As readers, we can be influenced by a poem in many ways. By the music of its lines, its unique structure, by its ability to paint fresh pictures of familiar places and interior landscapes. As writers, all that we experience by reading serves us when we write. Sometime we are called, consciously, to act on these influences. A friend, Carol, has loved Amy Lowell’s (1955) “Patterns” for many years. Recently, it came back to speak to her. In the midst of America’s war in Iraq, she thought of Lowell. In the poem, an eighteenth-century Englishwoman walks through an elegantly patterned garden thinking about patterns in life. Upon hearing of her fiancé’s death in a far-off war, she thinks of patterns broken. Carol was moved to cast Lowell’s poem in the modern day, through the lens of a young woman who has lost her love in Iraq—patterns broken. Her poem follows. But in order to appreciate what Carol has done, you will want to read Lowell’s poem first. It’s too long to include, so here’s an online site: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171725. PATTERNS, 2007 I walk down Concourse B, Level I, past shops hung with pine boughs, stars and angels, toys, elves, and fake snow. In the atrium, beside the twinkling tree is Santa’s sleigh. I’m looking, looking for somewhere to cry. Next May we were to marry, his tour of duty ending in late March. Big sale on tops at The Gap, all brands, all sizes. Two women, arms linked and laughing, go in looking, looking for something to need.

Two men, caps in hand and grim-faced, came to tell me. “Fine soldier, Miss. Served his country well.” White-bearded Santa comes in with his red bag. Kids climb in his lap, all smiles and giggles. They’re looking, looking for something to get. All he wanted was a chance, a chance to be more than a coal miner like his dad. At Macy’s people go in, come out, all weighed down with bags and boxes. They have to keep looking, looking for something to buy. I stop to stare in Tiffany’s window. Inside a lady in a fur coat tries on a sparkling bracelet. Why him, who had so little, why my Tom? while those who have so much stay safe behind? I’m looking, looking for someone to say why. —CAROL KELLOGG For students and teachers who want the creative challenge of recasting a poem through a different lens, let’s look at how Lowell’s “Patterns” influenced Carol’s “Patterns, 2007.” Different poems will bring different questions, but here are a few questions Carol considered. In both poems: • The speaker is a woman reflecting on the time and death of a fiancé. • In recasting the poem, who will be the speaker? What are his or her concerns? • The setting is a particular place: garden / shopping mall. • In recasting the poem, what will be the setting? How will the setting support the speaker? • The speaker is antiwar. • In recasting the poem, what is the attitude of the speaker? What stance is she taking? • The speaker deals with issues of inequality: women’s/economics.

• In recasting the poem, what issue is the speaker dealing with? In writing through a modern lens, Carol also had to consider the tone of the poem, the language and the voice of the speaker. The speaker in Lowell’s “Patterns” sounds elegant, cerebral. The rigid patterns of society are symbolized by the formal gardens and the speaker’s elaborate dress. In “Patterns, 2007,” the speaker is plainspoken, uses shorter lines. The patterns are formed by everyone at the mall looking for something. A pre-Christmas setting and atmosphere provides a sharp counterpoint to the anguish of the speaker. The superabundance of things available to the shoppers contrasts with “him who had so little.” Dying in a war, Carol reasoned, “for which the only predictable result will be, ironically, the profit brought to the commercial interests supplying it.” This is a moving poem, inspired by a current personal and political situation, and created in the wake of a loved poem from another era.

STUDENTS BREATHING IN MESSAGES, BREATHING OUT POEMS Sometimes, one certain poem, in uncertain times, can bring just the message we need. A few years ago, Maureen Barbieri experienced this in her work as a staff developer in New York’s Chinatown. The students were middle schoolers new to our country. Worried that they seemed so melancholy all the time, she read aloud poems she hoped would remind them of the joy and beauty to be found in ordinary things of the world. The class talked in depth about “Night” by Sara Teasdale. NIGHT Stars over snow, And in the west a planet Swinging below a star— Look for a lovely thing and you will find it, It is not far— It never will be far. —SARA TEASDALE (1994, 29) Maureen asked the young people to find “lovely things” in their neighborhoods, but grieving for what they had left behind, they wanted to write about “lovely things” in China. Understandably, they wanted to preserve their memories. “Look for a lovely thing and you will find it,” took the form of philosophical advice as the students made a conscious effort to look for the good in this new place. “Night” became a touchstone poem for the class. The principal read it at their graduation. Hearing poems daily, Maureen’s students chose poems they loved, copied them into their

“Bare Books,” and illustrated them. When the teachers asked them to write their own poems in their notebooks to “stand alongside” the poems they loved, they usually began in prose using what words they knew. Then they talked about how poems look and sound, how they are concise and full of images. Teachers did not overdo instruction. They relied on their belief that students will eventually write poems when they are immersed in daily reading (not analysis) of many poems and have lots of time to write, and passionate others to consult with. Teachers wrote along with the students every day. Mandy’s poem, “Journal Book,” shows how she began to find something of value in her present day life. JOURNAL BOOK A beautiful white rose, Sea as blue around it! In the book, Many things, Happy, sad, lonely … With my parent, friend, cousins … It like my good friend. Companion growing with me. My lovely thing. Sophia found something “lovely” in the attitude and actions of her grandmother. LOVELY THING Lovely comes from help. My grandmother—a good role model for me. A beggar lay down on the grass. My grandmother walks quickly, took him to home. Took out food, let beggar eat. Took out tea, let beggar drink. Beggar eats like wolves and tigers. Gave money to beggar. Beggar thanked my grandmother so much! Stars laughing, birds singing. Everything is happy

For my grandmother takes pleasure In helping. Rui took a playful run at the “Night Sky.” His fresh voice creates startling and vibrant images. NIGHT SKY It’s night again. Silence everywhere. But in the sky, it is very lively. Moonlady reflects shining light. Starboys make beautiful pictures. Oh, no! Greedy cat eats the moon. Shooting stars run fast to save the moon. Slowly students came to realize there were things to cherish and that making poems was a satisfying endeavor. They grew to love writing poetry. It became a positive force in their lives. Miracles in Chinatown: Writing in the Wake of Whitman

As Maureen and the teacher she worked with read from different poets every day, the students found favorites. Langston Hughes, especially his poem “Dreams.” And Walt Whitman. They wanted to read Whitman’s poem “Miracles” over and over again. Here’s an excerpt. Why, who makes much of a miracle? As to me I know of nothing else but miracles, Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water, Or stand under trees in the woods, Or talk by day with anyone I love, Or sit at table at dinner with the rest, or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car, Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon, … The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the ships with

men in them What strangerm iracles are there? —WALT WHITMAN (2002)

Students’ writers’ notebooks filled up with “miracle” entries. Cong took on Whitman’s stream-of-consciousness style and tone. Wondering what are miracles … Miracle is the sound in world why there always a sound or more in the world, why not even a second in the world that we have peace, there always sound in the world … Miracle is books, what book can do is take you places, make you feel like another person, I am not lying, books can do so much … so miracle is every where and everything on every second, just wear up your think cap and get going on!?!!?? Yi gives us a “little bit of timely advice.” MIRACLES Everything are miracles, Even a bit of light, The beautiful shining light That the firecrackers make Are miracles. The stars, the moon, the sun, the clouds, The people are all miracles. Miracle is everywhere. Miracle is everything. If you open your eyes And see the world. A Note: Maureen Barbieri’s (2002) book, Change My Life Forever: Giving Voice to English-Language Learners, uses case studies and vignettes to show the power of literacy to affect students’ lives and give them hope.

PROMPTS FOR WRITING IN THE WAKE

Lockward, Diane. 2013. The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop. Nicholasville, KY: Wind Publications. Malvasi, Christine, ed. 2012. Challenges for the Delusional: Peter Murphy’s Prompts and the Poems They Inspired. New York: Jane Street Press. Poets Online. 2013. http://www.poetsonline.org.

POEM CENTRAL: THE MYSTERY AND MIRACLE OF WORDS

YOU’VE BEEN GIVEN ONE LIFE, ONE SET OF UNIQUE EXPERIENCES; OUT OF THOSE PARTICULARS, MAKE THE POEMS ONLY YOU CAN MAKE. —Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux (1997, 28) We’ve traveled together through the pages of this book and reached a kind of destination. But the journey doesn’t end. It is fueled by the power of words to connect the sources of the outside world and the sources within. THEY FOLLOW ME Even here, even now, a Sunday morning at the lake— in the ten thousand points of fiery light jumping up and down on the unstill water, uncatchable, mesmerizing, various, all the small elf lights making one field of scintillating light—my students suddenly appear: restless, chattery, overflowing with bluster or timidly emitting that inner glow so mysterious, untouchable and luminous that it keeps me returning again and again to their exhausting world— near-adolescents packed like a drawerful of mismatched socks into a single classroom. I run away. Close my eyes, open them in a new place—discover I’ve been followed. Sun’s got the whole lake dancing with light

but only part of me can attend. The classroom won’t let go. Even kids who will be plain one day are beautiful now as they change daily, becoming themselves as they try on new ways of being. Every day they look toward me, expecting something. I pour myself into the classroom and then—retreat. Weekends I think water, I think trees, escape. The young are on their way to somewhere else. I want simply to wave them on their way but they say no, they drive right through me, marking me with tire tracks, leaving me panting, breathing in their exuberant exhaust. —GINNY LOWE CONNORS (2013)

WE CAN KNOW A LOT. AND STILL, NO DOUBT, THERE ARE RASH AND WONDERFUL IDEAS BREWING SOMEWHERE; THERE ARE MANY SURPRISES YET TO COME.

—Mary Oliver (1994, 91)

RESOURCES FOR TEACHERS AND STUDENTS The following lists are a sampling, a small tribute to the many exquisite authors and books out there. Any grade-level numbers are simply a guide. Poems belong anywhere readers want them, need them, can use them.

BOOKS TO NURTURE WRITING AND THE WRITING LIFE Addonizio, Kim. 2009. Ordinary Genius. New York: W. W. Norton. Addonizio, Kim, and Dorianne Laux. 1997. The Poet’s Companion. New York: W. W. Norton. Baker, Nicholson. 2009. The Anthologist. New York: Simon and Schuster. Behn, Robin, and Chase Twichell, eds. 1992. The Practice of Poetry. New York: HarperCollins. Braham, Jeanne. 2007. The Light Within the Light. Boston: David R. Godine. Drury, John. 2006. Creating Poetry. Cincinnati, OH: Writer’s Digest Books. Fry, Stephen. 2006. The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within. New York: Gotham. Gillan, Maria Mazziotti. 2013. Writing to Save Your Life: How to Find the Courage to Tell Your Stories. Toronto: MiroLand Imprint. Goldberg, Natalie. 1986. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within. Boston: Shambhala. ——. 1990. Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life. New York: Bantam Books. ——. 2013. The True Secret of Writing: Connecting Life with Language. New York: Atria Books. Hall, Donald. 1978. Goatfoot, Milktongue, Twinbird. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Hill, Laban Carrick. 2003. Harlem Stomp: A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance. New York: Little, Brown. Hirsch, Edward. 1999. How to Read a Poem. San Diego, CA: Harcourt. Hirshfield, Jane. 1997. Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry. New York: HarperCollins. Housden, Roger. 2004. Ten Poems to Last a Lifetime. New York: Harmony Books. Hugo, Richard. 1979. The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing. New York: W. W. Norton. Kooser, Ted. 2000. Winter Morning Walks: One Hundred Postcards to Jim Harrison. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University Press.

——. 2005. The Poetry Home Repair Manual. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Kumin, Maxine. 2000. Always Beginning: Essays on a Life in Poetry. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon. Lamott, Anne. 1994. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. New York: Pantheon. Lyne, Sandford. 2007. Writing Poetry from the Inside Out: Finding Your Voice Through the Craft of Poetry. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks. McEwen, Christian. 2011. World Enough and Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down. Peterborough, NH: Bauhan. McLane, Maureen N. 2012. My Poets. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. McNair, Wesley. 2003. Mapping the Heart: Reflections on Place and Poetry. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University Press. ——. 2012. The Words I Chose: A Memoir of Family and Poetry. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University Press. Orr, Gregory. 2002. Poetry as Survival. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Rosen, Kim. 2009. Saved by a Poem: The Transformative Power of Words. New York: Hay House. Rukeyser, Muriel. 1996. The Life of Poetry. Ashfield, MA: Paris Press. Shapiro, Dani. 2013. Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life. New York: Grove Atlantic. Skinner, Jeffrey. 2012. The 6.5 Practices of Moderately Successful Poets: A Self-Help Memoir. Louisville, KY: Sarabande Books. Soto, Gary. 2013. What Poets Are Like: Up and Down with the Writing Life. Seattle, WA: Sasquatch Books. Strand, Mark, and Eavan Boland. 2000. The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. New York: W. W. Norton. Wooldridge, Susan G. 1996. poemcrazy: freeing your life with words. New York: Random House.

A SHORT STACK OF BOOKS ABOUT CRAFT Addiss, Stephen. 2012. The Art of Haiku. Boston: Shambhala. Addonizio, Kim, and Dorianne Laux. 1997. The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry. New York: W. W. Norton. Behn, Robin, and Chase Twichell, eds. 1992. The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises from

Poets Who Teach. New York: HarperCollins. Citino, David, ed. 2002. The Eye of the Poet: Six Views of the Art and Craft of Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press. Doty, Mark. 2010. The Art of Description: World into Word. Minneapolis, MN: Gray Wolf. Flynn, Nick, and Shirley McPhillips. 2000. A Note Slipped Under the Door: Teaching from Poems We Love. Portland, ME: Stenhouse. Hoagland, Tony. 2006. Real Sofistikashun: Essays on Poetry and Craft. Saint Paul, MN: Graywolf. Kooser, Ted. 2005. The Poetry Home Repair Manual. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Kowit, Steve. 1995. In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet’s Portable Workshop. Gardiner, ME: Tilbury House. Lockward, Diane. 2013. The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop. Nicholasville, KY: Wind Publications. Longenback, James. 2008. The Art of the Poetic Line. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf. Oliver, Mary. 1994. A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry. New York: Harcourt Brace. Padgett, Ron, ed. 2007. The Teachers and Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms. 2nd ed. New York: Teachers and Writers Collaborative. Pinsky, Robert. 1998. The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Skinner, Jeffrey. 2012. The 6.5 Practices of Moderately Successful Poets: A Self-Help Memoir. Lousville, KY: Sarabande Books. Stafford, Kim. 2003. The Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer’s Craft. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Strand, Mark, and Eavan Boland. 2000. The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. New York: W. W. Norton. Turco, Lewis. 1986. The New Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics. Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England. Wiggerman, Scott, and David Meischen, eds. 2011. Wingbeats: Exercises and Practice in Poetry. Austin, TX: Los Gatos Press.

A SHORT STACK OF BOOKS TO SUPPORT TEACHERS’ WORK WITH YOUNG POETS Atwell, Nancie. 2005. Naming the World: A Year of Poems and Lessons. Portsmouth, NH:

Heinemann. Barbieri, Maureen. 2002. Change My Life Forever: Giving Voice to English-Language Learners. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Chancer, Joni, and Gina Rester-Zodrow. 1997. Moon Journals. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Copeland, Jeffrey S., ed. 1993. Speaking of Poets: Interviews with Poets Who Write for Children and Young Adults. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Drake, Barbara. 1983. Writing Poetry. New York: Harcourt Brace. Fletcher, Ralph. 2002. Poetry Matters. New York: HarperTrophy. Flynn, Nick, and Shirley McPhillips. 2000. A Note Slipped Under the Door: Teachingfrom Poems We Love. Portland, ME: Stenhouse. Grossman, Florence. 1982. Getting from Here to There: Writing and Reading Poetry. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton Cook/Heinemann. Heard, Georgia. 1995. Writing Toward Home. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. ——. 1998. Awakening the Heart: Exploring Poetry in Elementary and Middle School. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Hewitt, Geof. 1998. Today You Are My Favorite Poet: Writing Poems with Teenagers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Janeczko, Paul B., ed. 2002. Seeing the Blue Between: Advice and Inspiration for Young Poets: Cambridge, MA: Candlewick. Kennedy, X. J., and Dorothy Kennedy. 1999. Knock at a Star: A Child’s Introduction to Poetry. Rev. ed. New York: Little, Brown. McVeigh-Schultz, Jane, and Mary Lynn Ellis. 1997. With a Poet’s Eye: Children Translate the World. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Michaels, Judith. 1999. Risking Intensity. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Ross, Bruce. 2002. How to Haiku: A Writer’s Guide to Haiku and Related Forms. Boston: Tuttle. Wakan, Naomi. 1993. Haiku: One Breath Poetry. Torrance, CA: Pacific Rim.

SOME BOOKS OF POEMS FOR YOUNGER POETS (GRADES 5 AND UP) Adoff, Arnold. 1982. All the Colors of the Race. New York: HarperCollins. Attenborough, E., ed. 2001. A Child’s Book of Poetry to Remember. New York: Scholastic.

Booth, David, ed. 1989. ’Til All the Stars Have Fallen. New York: Viking. Carson, Jo. 1989. Stories I Ain’t Told Nobody Yet. New York: Theatre Communications Group. DeFina, Allan A. 1997. When a City Leans Against the Sky. Honesdale, PA: Boyds Mills. Dunning, Stephen, and Edward Lueders, eds. 1967. Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickles. New York: HarperTeen. Esbensen, Barbara Juster. 1986. Words with Wrinkled Knees. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell. ——. 1996. Echoes for the Eye. New York: HarperCollins. Fletcher, Ralph. 2005. A Writing Kind of Day. Honesdale, PA: Boyds Mills. Frost, Robert. 1959. You Come Too. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Ho, Minfong. 1996. Maples in the Mist: Poems for Children from the Tang Dynasty. New York: Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Books. Hopkins, Lee Bennett. 1995. Been to Yesterdays: Poems of a Life. Honesdale, PA: Boyds Mills. Hughes, Langston. 1994. The Dream Keeper and Other Poems. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Janeczko, Paul B., ed. 1990. The Place My Words Are Looking For. New York: Bradbury. ——. 1998. That Sweet Diamond: Baseball Poems. New York: Atheneum. ——, ed. 2000. Stone Bench in an Empty Park. New York: Orchard Books. Lai, Thanhha. 2013. Inside Out and Back Again. New York: HarperCollins. Little, Jean. 1986. Hey, World, Here I Am! New York: Harper and Row. Lyne, Sandford, ed. 1996. Ten-Second Rainshowers. New York: Simon and Schuster. ——, ed. 2004. Soft Hay Will Catch You. New York: Simon and Schuster. Nye, Naomi Shihab. 2000. Salting the Ocean: IOO Poems by Young Poets. New York: Greenwillow Books. Soto, Gary. 2005. Neighborhood Odes. New York: HMH Books for Young Readers. Turner, Ann. 1993. Grass Songs. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR THE CLASSROOM BOOKSHELF: GRADES 6 AND UP Adoff, Arnold. 1982. All the Colors of the Race. New York: HarperCollins. Ali, Taha Muhammad. 2006. So What: New and Selected Poems, 1971–2005. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon. Berry, Wendell. 2005. Given: Poems. Washington, D.C.: Shoemaker, Hoard.

Cassedy, Sylvia, and Kunihiro Suetake, trans. 1992. Red Dragonfly on My Shoulder. New York: HarperCollins. Clifton, Lucille. 1987. Next: New Poems. Brockport, NY: BOA Editions. ——. 1992. The Book of Light. Fort Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon. ——. 1994. Quilting: Poems 1987–1990. Brockport, NY: BOA Editions. ——. 2000. Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988—2000. Rochester, NY: BOA Editions. Collins, Billy. 1988 The Apple That Astonished Paris. Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press. ——. 2001. Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems. New York: Random House. ——. 2002. Nine Horses. New York: Random House. ——. 2005. The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems. New York: Random House. Cummings, E. E. 1991. Complete Poems, 1904–1962. New York: Liveright. ——. 1991. Love: Selected Poems. New York: Hyperion Books for Children. DeFina, Allan A. 1997. When a City Leans Against the Sky. Honesdale, PA: Boyds Mills. Dickinson, Emily. 1961. Final Harvest: Emily Dickinson’s Poems. Boston: Little, Brown. Doty, Mark. 2008. Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems. New York: HarperCollins. Farrell, Kate. 1996. Art and Wonder: An Illustrated Anthology of Visionary Poetry. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Little, Brown. Ferlinghetti, Lawrence. 2005. How to Paint Sunlight: New Poems. New York: New Directions. Fletcher, Ralph. 1994. I Am Wings: Poems About Love. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers. ——. 1997. Ordinary Things: Poems from a Walk in Early Spring. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers. ——. 1998. Room Enough for Love. New York: Aladdin Paperbacks, Simon and Schuster. ——. 1999. Relatively Speaking: Poems About Family. New York: Orchard Books. Frost, Robert. 1975. The Poetry of Robert Frost: The Collected Poems, Complete and Unabridged. New York: Henry Holt. Gaige, Amity. 1990. We Are a Thunderstorm. Kansas City, MO: Landmark Editions. Giovanni, Nikki. 1996. Selected Poems. New York: William Morrow. Heaney, Seamus. 1985. Station Island. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

——. 1991. Seeing Things. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ——. 1998. Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966—1996. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Hearne, Betsy. 1987. Love Lines: Poetry in Person. New York: Margaret K. McElderry Books. Hill, Laban Carrick. 2003. Harlem Stomp: A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance. New York: Little, Brown. Hughes, Langston. 1994. The Dream Keeper and Other Poems. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Hughes, Ted. 1999. The Mermaid’s Purse. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Kenyon, Jane. 2005. Otherwise: New and Selected Poems. St. Paul, MN: Graywolf. Kinnell, Galway. 1990. When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ——. 2001. A New Selected Poems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ——. 2006. Strong Is Your Hold. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Kooser, Ted. 1985. Flying at Night: Poems of 1965–1985. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University Press. ——. 2000. Winter Morning Walks: One Hundred Postcards to Jim Harrison. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University Press. ——. 2004. Delights and Shadows. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon. ——. 2008. Valentines. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Kunitz, Stanley. 2002. The Collected Poems. New York: W. W. Norton. Lee, Li-Young. 2008. Behind My Eyes. New York: W. W. Norton. Lewis, J. Patrick. 1995. Black Swan White Crow: Haiku. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers. Lyon, George Ella. 1999. Where I’m From: Where Poems Come From. Spring, TX: Absey & Company. McBride, Mekeel. 1995. Wind of the White Dresses. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University Press. ——. 2001. The Deepest Part of the River. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University Press. ——. 2006. Dog Star Delicatessen: New and Selected Poems, 1979–2006. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University Press. Neruda, Pablo. 1990. Selected Odes of Pablo Neruda. Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

——. 1994. Odes to Common Things. Translated by Ferris Cook and Ken Krabbenhoft. New York: Little, Brown. ——. 1997. Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon: Selected Poems. Translated by Stephen Mitchell. New York: HarperCollins. ——. 2004. The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems. Edited by Mark Eisner. San Francisco, CA: City Light Books. ——. 2004. Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. Translated by W. S. Merwin. New York: Penguin. Nye, Naomi Shihab. 1998. Fuel. Rochester, NY: BOA Editions. ——. 2002. 9 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East. New York: Greenwillow Books. ——. 2005. A Maze Me: Poems for Girls. New York: Greenwillow Books. ——. 2005. You and Yours. Rochester, NY: BOA Editions. Olds, Sharon. 1989. The Gold Cell. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ——1992. The Father. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ——. 2013. Stag’s Leap. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Oliver, Mary. 1994. White Pine: Poems and Prose Poems. New York: Harcourt Brace. ——. 1999. Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems. New York: Houghton Mifflin. ——. 2000. The Leaf and the Cloud: A Poem. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo. ——. 2003. Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays. Boston: Beacon. ——. 2004. Blue Iris: Poems and Essays. Boston: Beacon. ——. 2005. New and Selected Poems: Volume Two. Boston: Beacon. ——. 2007. Our World. Boston: Beacon. ——. 2010. Swan: Poems and Prose Poems. Boston: Beacon. ——. 2012. A Thousand Mornings: Poems. New York: Penguin. Pastan, Linda. 1998. Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968–1998. New York: W. W. Norton. Peacock, Molly. 2002. Cornucopia: New and Selected Poems, 1975—2002. New York: W. W. Norton. Piercy, Marge. 1994. Circles on the Water. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Rylant, Cynthia. 1994. Something Permanent. New York: Harcourt Brace. ——. 2006. Boris. New York: HMH.

Shakur, Tupac. 1999. The Rose That Grew from Concrete. New York: Pocket Books. Sidman, Joyce. 2005. Song of the Water Boatman and Other Pond Poems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ——. 2010. Ubiquitous: Celebrating Nature’s Survivors. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Sitomer, Alan, and Michael Cirelli. 2004. Hip-Hop Poetry and the Classics. Beverly Hills, CA: Milk Mug Publishing. Soto, Gary. 1995. New and Selected Poems. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books. Stafford, William. 1994. Learning to Live in the World: Earth Poems. New York: Harcourt Brace. ——. 1996. Even in Quiet Places. Lewiston, ID: Confluence Press. ——. 1997. Stories That Could Be True: New and Collected Poems. New York: Harper and Row. ——. 2008. Another World Instead: The Early Poems of William Stafford, 1937–1947. St. Paul, MN: Graywolf. Stevens, Wallace. 1982. The Collected Poems. New York: Vintage. Strand, Mark. 1980. Selected Poems. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Tapahonso, Luci. 1987. A Breeze Swept Through. Albuquerque, NM: West End. Turner, Ann. 1993. Grass Songs. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Whitman, Walt. 1996. The Complete Poems. New York: Penguin. ——. 2005. Leaves of Grass. New York: Penguin. Wright, Richard. 1998. Haiku: This Other World. New York: Arcade. Yeats, William Butler. 1989. The Poems, Revised. Edited by Richard J. Finneran. New York: Macmillan. Yolen, Jane. 2009. A Mirror to Nature: Poems About Reflection. Honesdale, PA: Wordsong. Young, Ed. 1997. Voices of the Heart. New York: Scholastic Press.

NOVELS IN VERSE Engle, Margarita. 2013 The Lightning Dreamer: Cuba’s Greatest Abolitionist. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Hesse, Karen. 1997. Out of the Dust. New York: Scholastic. ——. 2001. Witness. New York: Scholastic.

Howe, James. 2012. Addie on the Inside. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers. Lai, Thanhha. 2013. Inside Out and Back Again. New York: HarperCollins. McCormick, Patricia. 2006. Sold. New York: Hyperion Books for Young Readers. Schroeder, Lisa. 2010. Chasing Brooklyn. New York: Simon Pulse. Singer, Marilyn. 2010. Mirror Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse. New York: Dutton Juvenile Books. Testa, Maria. 2007. Something About America. New York: Candlewick. Wolff, Virginia Euwer. 1994. Make Lemonade. New York: Scholastic.

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CREDITS Part 1: Poetic License image: “Poetic License,” © Rick Allen and the Kenspeckle Letterpress. Reed Whittemore, “The High School Band in September” from The Past, the Future, the Present: Poems New and Selected. Copyright ©1990 by Reed Whittemore. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of the University of Arkansas Press, www.uapress.com. “Acceptance” by Langston Hughes from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad with David Roessel, Associate Editor, copyright ©1994 by the Estate of Langston Hughes. Used by permission of Alfred Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. Any third-party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Random House, Inc. for permission. For e-book: Reprinted by permission of Harold Ober Associates Incorporated. William Stafford, “You Reading This, Be Ready” from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 1998 by the Estate of William Stafford. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org. “A word is dead” by Emily Dickinson from The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition, edited by Ralph W. Franklin, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1998, 1999 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Tom Hennen, “The Life of a Day” from Darkness Sticks to Everything: Collected and New Poems. Copyright © 1997 by Tom Hennen. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org. “There” by Lee Bennett Hopkins from Been to Yesterdays: Poems of a Life by Lee Bennett Hopkins. Copyright © 1995 by Lee Bennett Hopkins. Published by WordSong, an imprint of Boyds Mills Press. Part 2: “How to Read a Poem: Beginner’s Manual” by Pamela Spiro Wagner from We Mad Climb Shaky Ladders, Copyright © 2009, Pamela Spiro Wagner. Reprinted by permission of CavanKerry Press. “The Yawn” by Paul Blackburn from Collected Poems of Paul Blackburn. Copyright © 1985

by Joan Blackburn. Reprinted by permission of Persea Books, Inc., New York. All rights reserved. “Telling Time” by Jo McDougall from Dirt by Jo McDougall. Copyright © 2003 by Jo McDougall, published by Autumn House Press. Reprinted by permission of publisher. “The Way I See Any Hope for Later” by Arnold Adoff. Text copyright © 1982 by Arnold Adoff. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Lucille Clifton, “The 1st” from The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton. Copyright © 2012 by The Estate of Lucille T. Clifton. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org. “A Little Bit of Timely Advice” by Mekeel McBride. Reprinted with permission of author. “A Woman Sips Coffee at Starbucks” by Norma Bernstock. Reprinted with permission of the author. Part 3: “Anybody Can Write a Poem” by Bradley Paul. Copyright © 2010, Bradley Paul. Reprinted with permission of Bradley Paul. “Six Words” by Lloyd Schwartz, originally appeared in Ploughshares in 2003. Reprinted by permission of author. “Found Poems” © copyright Robert Phillips. Reprinted with permission of Western Humanities Review. Found poem from The Secret World of Walter Anderson, ©2009 Candlewick Press. Reprinted with permission. Ellen Bass, “Mighty Strong Poems” from Mules of Love. Copyright © 2002 by Ellen Bass. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org. “The Great Figure” by Williams Carlos Williams, from The Collected Poems: Volume 1, 1909–1939. Copyright ©1938 by New Directions Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. “I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold” by Charles Demuth. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Pocket Poem” by Ted Kooser from Flying at Night: Poems 1965–1985 by Ted Kooser, © 2005. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press. “The Truth About Why I Love Potatoes” by Mekeel McBride. Reprinted with permission of author.

Monica Youn, “Stealing the Scream” from Barter. Copyright © 2003 by Monica Youn. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Graywolf Press, www.graywolfpress.org. “Museum Vase” by Robert Francis reprinted from Collected Poems 1936–1976. Copyright © 1976 by Robert Francis and published by the University of Massachusetts. “Dancing Freckles” by Shuli Pilo. Photographs by Hank Gans. Printed with permission from sculptor and photographer. Heron paintings by Eli Rosenthal. © Eli Rosenthal. Ted Kooser, “November 18” from Winter Morning Walks: One Hundred Postcards to Jim Harrison. Copyright © 2000 by Ted Kooser. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Carnegie Mellon University Press, www.cmu.edu/universitypress. “Shakespeare’s Expletives for Everyday Use” by Ron Barrett. © 2009. Printed with permission of Ron Barrett. “They Follow Me” by Ginny Lowe Connors. Reprinted with permission of author. The following poems by Shirley McPhillips first appeared in Brenda Power’s Choice Literacy (www.choiceliteracy.com): “Along Saplines” “Invocation at the End of Summer” “Messengers” “Sketching Trees in Winter”

INDEX Page numbers followed by an f indicate figures. A “about” factor, 78–80 Academy of American Poets, 30, 104, 142, 177 “Acceptance” (Hughes), 13–14 Acevedo, Elizabeth, 245 Aciman, Alexander, 118 Addiss, Stephen, 195 Addonizio, Kim, 19, 78, 80, 167, 270 Adoff, Arnold, 81–82 “Afraid So” (Beaumont), 51 Agner, Mary Alexandra, 227–228 Aitken, Robert, 192 Aldredge, Michelle, 30, 44 Alexander, Elizabeth, 119, 246–247 Alive Together (Mueller), 56 alliteration, 60, 126, 239 All the Colors of the Race (Adoff), 81 “All the Time” (McPhillips), 191 “Along Saplines” (McPhillips), 85–86 Always Beginning (Kumin), 19, 224 America, culture, 3 “American Life in Poetry” (Kooser), 4 Americans’ Favorite Poems (Pinsky), 75 anaphora, 128 Anderson, Walter, 140 Angelillo, Janet, 76–77, 79 Angelou, Maya, 73 animated poetry, 199 anthologies, 27 Anthologist, The (Baker), 19 anticipation, 164, 167 “Anybody Can Write a Poem” (Paul), 112–113 “Archaic Torso of Apollo” (Rilke), 198

“Architect Sketch, The” (Monty Python Comedy Troupe), 254, 256 Armenti, Peter, 169 Arnosky, Jim, 139 “Art, For Pete’s Sake” (McRae), 204 art and poetry, 33, 196–202, 205, 207–209, 211–213, 218–221, 241–242 artifacts and poetry, 211–213 Art of Description, The (Doty), 58, 130 Art of Haiku (Addiss), 195 Art of the Poetic Line, The (Longenbach), 54, 148, 167 Ashbery, John, 226 Ashokan Fiddle and Dance Camps, 222 “Asparagus” (Worth), 57 assonance, 239 Attenborough, E., 30, 67 “At the Sea-Side” (Stevenson), 179 attitude, 238 Atwell, Nancie, 30 “Audience” (Kumin), 83 Ayers, Lana Hechtman, 225 B “Baba Yaga Advises Red Riding Hood” (Ayers), 225 background information, 55–56, 243 Bai, Li. See Li, Bai Baker, David, 54 Baker, Jenni B., 137, 143 Baker, Nicholson, 19 Barbieri, Maureen, 69, 100, 265, 267, 269 “Bare Books,” 265 “Bare Legs Walk About” (McPhillips, Sean), 191 Bark (blog), 199 Barrett, Ron, 254–255 “Basho” (Soji), 195 Bass, Ellen, 5, 8, 109–110, 150–155 Bass, Hester, 140 Battleground (Pirosh), 116 Baylor, Byrd, 163

“Beating Time” (Peter), 162 Beaumont, Jeanne Marie, 51 “Beautiful and Powerful Warrior” (Mia), 212–213 Beckett, Samuel, 142 Beckman, Joshua, 170 Bedard, Carol, 44 Been to Yesterdays (Hopkins), 37, 41–43 Behn, Robin, 54, 67, 110 Berger, John, 181 Bernstock, Norma, 106–108 Berryman, John, 226 Bervin, Jen, 145 Best of the Best American Poetry, The (Pinsky and Lehman), 30 Beyer, Tamiko, 240 Bishop, Elizabeth, 170 “Blackberry Eating” (Kinnell), 28 Blackburn, Paul, 51–53, 82 Black Swan Green (Mitchell), 86–87 Blanco, Richard, 168 Blog Rank, 44 blogs, 28, 36–41, 43–44, 132 “Blueberry” (Lockward), 155–157 Blue Pastures (Oliver), 19 Blue Prints (Coles), 244 Bly, Robert, 22 Blyth, R. H., 189, 195 Boland, Eavan, 54, 253 bookmarks, 174 Book of Light, The (Clifton), 227 bookspine poems, 163–164 book title poems, 163–164 Boss, Todd, 199 “Bound” (Kenna), 119 Braham, Jeanne, 19 brainstorming, 256–257, 259 Brooks, Gwendolyn, 59 Browning, Robert, 226

Buchwald, Emilie, 223 Bum Rush the Page (Medina and Rivera), 30, 67 Bunting, Eve, 102–104 Burns, Ken, 222 Burns, Robert, 74 “Buying Him a Kite” (Shoha), 190 C caesura, 261 Caldwell, Barbara, 147, 205–206 Calendar of Days (QPB), 254 call and response reading, 63 Call Down the Moon (Livingston), 67, 130 Cameron, Ann, 138, 163–164 “Cape Cod Evening” (Caldwell), 206 “Cape Cod Evening” (Hopper), 205, 207 Carroll, Lewis, 80, 147 Carson, Jo, 227 “Case of You, A” (Mitchell), 11 “Casey at the Bat” (Thayer), 61 Cassedy, Sylvia, 195 “Cat’s Tail Twitches” (Calley), 193 cento, 57, 132, 141–143 “Chairs” (Worth), 57 Challenges for the Delusional (Malvasi), 130, 269 Change My Life Forever (Barbieri), 269 “Chansons Innocentes I” (Cummings), 82 chanting tone, 51 character, 109, 226–239. See also speaker in poems charting character, 235–236 Chast, Roz, 196 children and poetry, 22–23 China Cultural Revolution, 15 poetry, 15–16, 21–22 choice of poems, 25 choral reading, 63–66, 174

choreography of choral reading, 63–64, 66 circulating poetry, 24–26 Citino, David, 4, 54, 83, 92 Civil War, The (Burns), 222 classrooms blogs, 28, 36–41, 43–44 embedded poetry, 25–26 independent reading, 26 music in, 222–223 poetry reading, 32–33, 35, 37, 80, 174, 176–177, 211, 265 poetry writing, 33, 157–163, 176–177, 207–217, 221–223, 233–239, 241–242, 247–249, 256–257, 259, 261, 265, 267–268 poet visits, 29 Cleese, John, 254, 256 Clifton, Lucille, 102–104, 227 Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (Barrett), 254 Coleman, Wanda, 199 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 14 Coles, Katherine, 244 collaborations, 218–221 “Collecting Their Thoughts” (Smithsonian Education), 224 collections of poetry, 26 Collins, Billy, 4, 12–13, 25, 30, 51, 53–54, 76, 80, 92, 100, 119, 150, 152 community colleges, 4 competitions, 28–29 complexity, 81 composing process, 209 concrete imagery, 165 Connors, Ginny Lowe, 270–271 consideration, 95 consonance, 239 constructions of poems, 99, 109, 134 content, 89, 155 conversational poems, 216, 227 “Country Girl Dreaming” (Janie), 223 Country Music (Wright), 224 Cox, Sidney, 19, 24

“Cracked Plate, The” (Lila), 185 craftsmanship, 148 Crafty Poet, The (Lockward), 269 Crazy Brave (Harjo), 109 Cruz, Victor Hernandez, 62 Cullen, Countee, 13, 222 Cummings, E. E., 59, 82, 147 D Dadaists, 131 daily poems, 3 “Dancing Freckles” (Pilo), 200–201 D’Angour, Armand, 169 Day (Goldsmith), 146 day to day poems, 173–176 “December Morning” (Xian), 210 “Defence of Poetry, A” (Shelley), 87, 92 “Defining Difficulty in Poetry” (Shepherd), 92 Demi, 195 Demuth, Charles, 165–166 Desprez, Frank, 3 Dessoff Choirs, 199 Dickinson, Emily, 33, 55, 125, 132–133, 142, 219 “Dictionary, The” (Simic), 83 “Different Kind of Seven, A” (Emily), 90–91 difficulty of poetry, 76–83, 86, 89, 91, 96 Dillard, Annie, 131, 137, 145, 147 Diller, Elizabeth, 219 Dineen, Liesl, 118–119 discussions, 94–99, 103–104 “Dish of Peaches in Russia, A” (Stevens), 56 distillation, 143 Dodds, Phyllis Powell, 173 Doty, Mark, 58, 118, 130 Dove, Rita, 199 drafts, 215–217, 229, 231–232, 235–239, 241, 247, 250, 259 dramatic monologues, 127–128, 226 “Dreamer” (Hughes), 14

“Dreams” (Hughes), 14, 28, 267 Duets (Rosenthal and Rosenthal), 218, 224 Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 13 Dunning, Stephen, 145 Dunphy, John J., 189–190, 195 “Dust of Snow” (Frost), 178 E Echoes for the Eye (Esbensen), 246 “Edvard Munch” (Wright), 224 Ehrenworth, Mary, 223 ekphrastic poems, 166, 196–225, 205, 207–208, 242 “Ekphrastic Poetry” (Morrison), 224 Eliot, T. S., 11, 178, 226 Elledge, Scott, 59 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 50 emotional connections to poetry, 61, 69, 73–74, 89–90, 94, 129, 262, 264–267 empathy, 68 end-stopping, 150, 152–154 enjambment, 150, 152–153, 160–162 enthusiasm for poetry, 76–77, 256 epigraph, 50 epinicia, 168 Esbensen, Barbara Juster, 246 Essential Haiku, The (Hass), 192, 195 Evanczuk, J. K., 134 “Expressing the Inexpressible” (Pope), 89 Eye of the Poet, The (Citino), 4, 54, 83, 92 F “Facing It” (Komunyakaa), 198 “Falling: The Code” (Lee), 179 “Favorite Poem Project, The” (Pinsky), 4, 67 “Feelin’ Gold” (Jay), 235 feelings, 52–53 “Fern Hill” (Thomas), 61 festive occasions, 169–170

Feuer, Alan, 134, 145 “50 Awesome Ways to Use Skype in Your Classroom,” 29 “50 Creative Ways to Use Skype in Your Classroom,” 29 figurative language, 87–89 fingerprint poems, 213–217 “1st, The” (Clifton), 102–104 fishbowl, 64 Fitterman, Robert, 146 Fly Away Home (Bunting), 102–104 Flynn, Nick, 51, 57, 67, 223 Fooling with Words (Moyers), 19, 130 Foot in the Mouth, A (Janeczko), 30, 67, 130 Forges-Ryan, Sylvia, 194 form, 56–57, 80–82, 135, 149, 155 formal difficulty, 80–82 “For the Sleepwalkers” (Hirsch), 56 “Found and Headline Poems” (Dunning and Stafford), 145 “Found Poems” (Phillips), 145 “Found Poem Student Challenge” (New York Times), 145 found poetry, 131–144 Found Poetry Review, The, 137, 143, 145 Fragos, Emily, 223 Francesco Petrarca (Marsh), 254 Francis, Robert, 199–200 Frederick, Molly, 219–220 Freedom Summer (Wiles), 229 free verse, 50, 134, 165, 167, 246 friendship, 170–172 “(From a Letter by Emily Dickinson)” (Phillips), 133 “(From a Letter by Vincent Van Gogh)” (Phillips), 133 Frost, Robert, 16, 24–25, 93, 96–100, 169–170, 178, 199, 234 Frost Place (Franconia, N.H.), 190 Fuhrken, Charles, 44 Fullam, Con, 199 G Gandara, Alexa, 101

George, Kristine O’Connell, 244 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, 62 Getting the Knack (Dunning and Stafford), 145 “Ghost Tree, The” (McPhillips), 181 “Giant Victory” (Rosie), 121–122 Giles, Herbert A., 16 Gillan, Maria Mazziotti, 19 Ginsberg, Allen, 199 Girmay, Aracelis, 245 “Git on Home” (Erika), 229 Glazner, Gary Mex, 30 Goatfoot, Milktongue, Twinbird (Hall), 62 “Godmother Limit, The” (Agner), 228 Goldsmith, Kenneth, 146 Good Poems (Keillor), 39 Good Poems, American Places (Keillor), 195 Good Poems for Hard Times (Keillor), 19, 75, 177 Gotham Writers’ Workshop, 119–120 Grass Songs (Turner), 227 “Gray Tree, The” (Mondrian), 202, 203f “Great Blue Heron, The” (Rosenthal and Rosenthal), 218 “Great Figure, The” (Williams), 164–165 Great Gilly Hopkins, The (Paterson), 230 Greenberg, Jan, 207, 223 Greenfield, Eloise, 63 group talk, 93–95 Gubar, Susan, 142, 145 “Gwarlingo” (Aldredge), 30, 44 H Habash, Gabe, 58 habit of poetry, 25 Hafez (Persian poet), 22 haiku, 189–194 Haiku (Blyth), 195 Haiku Handbook, The (Higginson and Harter), 192 Hall, Donald, 62

Hamby, Barbara, 246 “Hardware Store as Proof of the Existence of God, A” (Willard), 246 Harjo, Joy, 109, 246 Harper’s Magazine, 93 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling), 48 Harter, Penny, 192 Hass, Robert, 192, 195 Hayden, Robert, 226 Heard, Georgia, 177 Heart to Heart (Greenberg), 223 Hemingway, Ernest, 119–120 Hempel, Amy, 199, 244 Hennen, Tom, 39–40 Hesse, Karen, 37 Hey, World, Here I Am (Little), 38 Higginson, William J., 192 “High School Band in September, The” (Whittemore), 12 Hirsch, Edward, 56, 63, 67, 196, 223 Hirshfield, Jane, 27 Ho, Minfong, 21–22, 163–164 Hoagland, Tony, 93 Hollander, Claire Needell, 73, 89 homage poems, 102, 245–250 Homer, A. R., 13 Honey, I Love (Greenfield), 63 Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 59–61 Hopkins, Lee Bennett, 37, 41–43, 56, 195 Hopper, DeWolf, 61 Hopper, Edward, 205, 207 Housden, Roger, 19, 75, 177 Housman, A. E., 13, 147 Howe, Marie, 184–185 “How Everything Happens” (Swenson), 55–56 “How to Read a Poem” (Academy of American Poets), 104 How to Read a Poem (Hirsch), 67 “How to Read a Poem” (Wagner), 46–47 How to Read a Poem … and Start a Poetry Circle (Peacock), 20, 104

Hughes, Langston, 13–14, 28, 37, 73, 267 Hugo, Richard, 128 hyperbole, 250 I iambic pentameter, 153 “I Am the Headwaters” (Post), 243–244 ideas in poetry, 100 “If You Don’t Come” (Mack), 56, 70–72 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Angelou), 73 “Image, The” (Flynn and McPhillips), 223 imagery, 126, 128–129, 142, 144, 165, 181–184, 187, 189–191, 196–197, 209, 248, 250, 265, 267 imagination, 109, 126, 226, 228 imagistic poetry, 165 “I’m Just Fiddlin’” (Aaron), 223 improvisation, 170 inanimate in poetry, 242–243 independent reading, 26 inquiry, 194 inspiration, 16, 207–208, 220, 243 “Inspired by the Pastel Work by Alfred Thomas Titled ‘Passers By’” (Frederick), 219–220 “Instructions, Exactly” (Myron), 136 interactive reading, 128 internal dialogues, 205 internal rhyme, 239 interpretation, 80, 87, 100 “Interrogation” (Parkhurst), 214–216 In the Eyes of the Cat (Demi), 195 intimacy, 46–49 “Intimations of Immortality” (Wordsworth), 147 “Introduction to Poetry” (Collins), 80 “Invective Against a Detractor of Italy” (Petrarca), 254 “Invective Against a Man of High Rank with No Knowledge or Virtue” (Petrarca), 254 “Invective Against Mean Girls” (Martha), 257–258 “Invective Against My Brother” (Molly), 259–260 “Invective Against Pugs” (Nutter), 256 “Invective Against the Bumblebee” (Lockward), 256 “Invective Against the Green Flies of Long Beach Island” (Kostenko), 256

invective poems, 254, 256–261 “Invocation” (Levertov), 251 “Invocation at the End of Summer” (McPhillips), 252 invocation poems, 251–252 “I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold” (Demuth), 165–166 italics, 51 “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” (Wordsworth), 179 J “Jabberwocky” (Carroll), 80, 147 “Jack Sprat” (nursery rhyme), 77 Jagger, John Hubert, 73 Janeczko, Paul, 30, 37, 67, 130, 246 “Jimmy Stewart Reads a Poem About His Dog Beau” (YouTube), 20 “John Green Takes His Warner, New Hampshire, Neighbor to a Red Sox Game” (Kumin), 57 Johnson, Ronald, 146 Jones, James Earl, 61 “Journal Book” (Mandy), 266 “Juke Box Love Song” (Hughes), 14 “Just Being Enough” (Flynn and McPhillips), 223 K Keats, John, 198, 246 Keillor, Garrison, 19, 30, 39, 75, 132, 157, 168, 173–174, 177, 195 Kellogg, Carol, 147, 263–264 Kenna, Leslie, 118–119 Kenny, Adele, 224 Kenyon, Jane, 77, 79, 253 Kenyon Review Newsletter, 240 Kinky Boots (musical), 139 Kinnell, Galway, 28, 51 kiriji, 191 Kleon, Austin, 146 Komunyakaa, Yusef, 4, 198 Kooser, Ted, 4, 30, 55–56, 58, 75, 88, 109, 148, 172, 177, 195, 240 Koren, Leonard, 192

Kostenko, Chris, 36, 256 Kumin, Maxine, 19, 51, 57, 83, 224 Kundiman (Organization), 240 Kunitz, Stanley, 18 Kurosawa, Akira, 135 L “Lake Isle of Innisfree, The” (Yeats), 61, 147 language, 18, 88, 98–99, 264 figurative, 87–89 imagistic, 99, 191 poetic, 182–183, 208 Language of Life series (Moyers), 62 “Lasca” (Desprez), 3 Laux, Dorianne, 80, 167, 270 Lea, Sydney, 79, 120 Lear, Edward, 76 Leaves of Grass (Whitman), 11 Lee, Li-Young, 179 Lehman, David, 30 L’Engle, Madeleine, 171 “Let Evening Come” (Kenyon), 79, 253 letter writing, 116 “Let the Cricket Take Up Chafing” (Flynn and McPhillips), 67 Levertov, Denise, 251 Levine, Arlene Gay, 179 Lewis, E. B., 140 Li, Bai, 15–16 Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.), 4, 117, 245 “Life of a Day, The” (Hennen), 39 Light Within the Light, The (Braham), 19 Lincoln, Abraham, 169 “Line by Line” (Bass and Lockward), 8 line endings, 144, 149–150, 152–154, 156–162, 165, 167 lines, 51, 148–150, 152–156, 162–165, 167 “Line/The Form/The Music, The” (Baker and Townsend), 54 listening, 27, 47, 61–62, 70–71, 81, 98, 100, 159 Listeningfor Madeleine (Marcus), 171

Little, Jean, 38 “Little Bit of Timely Advice, A” (McBride), 18, 105–106 Little White Shadow, A (Ruefle), 146 Livingston, Myra Cohn, 67, 130 “Living with Cancer” (Gubar), 145 Lockward, Diane, 8, 108–109, 155–157, 159, 256, 269 Logan School (Denver, Co.), 242 Longenbach, James, 54, 148–149, 167 Looking to Write (Ehrenworth), 223 “Losing My Sight” (Mueller), 56 Love (Neruda), 75 “Love and the 7:04 to White Plains” (New York Times), 134 “Loveliest of Trees the Cherry Now” (Houseman), 13, 147 “Lovely Thing” (Sophia), 266 “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The” (Eliot), 11 Lowell, Amy, 262, 264 Lowell, Robert, 170 “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota” (Wright), 57 Lyric Gems of Scotland, 73 M Mack, Marguerite, 56, 70–72 Making of a Poem, The (Strand and Boland), 54, 253 Malvasi, Christine, 130, 269 Mann, Horace, 194 Mao, Zedong, 15 Maples in the Mist (Ho), 21, 163–164 Mapping the Heart (McNair), 19, 58, 75 “March Street Is Closed Off” (McPhillips, Sean), 191 Marcus, Leonard S., 171 Marsh, David, 254 Marx Brothers, 116 masks, 226–227 Mason, Molly, 222 McBride, Mekeel, 18, 105–106, 175–176 McCully, Patrick, 243 McDonald, Travis, 146 McDougall, Jo, 68–69

McEwen, Christian, 19, 75 McLane, Maureen, 19, 142, 145 McNair, Wesley, 19, 58, 74–75, 205, 239, 256 McPhillips, Sean, 191 McPhillips, Shirley, 23, 57, 67, 180–181, 184–185, 191, 207–209, 223, 252 McRae, Bruce, 202–205 meaning, 80, 86 Medina, Tony, 30, 67 Meischen, David, 58 Melville, Elizabeth Shaw, 3 Melville, Herman, 3 memorization, 22–23, 205 messages in poems, 265, 267 “Messengers” (McPhillips), 22–23 Messner, Kate, 29 “Messy Room” (Silverstein), 76 metaphors, 87–88, 100, 125, 152, 156, 165, 239, 247, 250 metric rules, 50 Metropolitan Museum of Art (N.Y.), 211–213 MGM Pictures, 116 Michael, Pamela, 244 “Mighty Strong Poems” (Bass), 150–154 Millay, Edna St. Vincent, 13 “Miracles” (Whitman), 267–268 “Miracles” (Yi), 268–269 “Miss Scarlett” (Place), 146 Mitchell, David, 86–87 Mitchell, Joni, 11 Mixed Voices (Buchwald and Roston), 223 Moby-Dick (Melville), 3 Mondrian, Piet, 202, 203f “Month for Haiku, A” (Dunphy), 189, 195 Monty Python (Comedy Troupe), 254, 256 Mornings Like This (Dillard), 145 Morrison, Valerie, 224 Most Beautiful Place in the World, The (Cameron), 138, 163–164 Mother’s Day, 101

motion poems, 199 mournful occasions, 169 movement, 55 Moyers, Bill, 19, 22, 62, 130 Mueller, Lisel, 56 Mules of Love (Bass), 150 Mulvihill, John, 58 Munch, Edvard, 196–198 Murray, Joan, 75, 177 muses, 251 museums, 211–213 “Museum Vase” (Francis), 199–200 music and poetry, 199, 222–223 Music in It, The (blog), 224 Music’s Spell (Fragos), 223 “My Husband Discovers Poetry” (Lockward), 109 “My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose” (Burns), 74 My Poets (McLane), 19, 142, 145 “My Poets, 1” (McLane), 142, 145 “My Prayer” (Emma), 129 Myron, Drew, 135–136 N Naming the World (Atwell), 30 narrator, 109. See also speaker in poems National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, 3 National Gallery (Oslo, Norway), 197 “National Laureate” (Fitterman), 146 National Poetry Contest on Twitter, 118 National Poetry Month, 240 National Poetry Slam, 28 “Nature the Gentlest Mother Is” (Dickinson), 219 “Near but Far, and Perhaps Unattainable” (Feuer), 145 “Nefertiti” (Mia), 236–238 Neighborhood Odes (Soto), 253 Nelson, Joel, 3 Neruda, Pablo, 56, 73, 75, 246, 253

Nets (Bervin), 145 New and Selected Poems (Soto), 253 NewPages, 44 Newspaper Blackout (Kleon), 146 New Yorker, 83, 196 New York Public Library, 118 New York Times, 61, 89, 101–102, 119, 134, 142, 145 New York Times Sunday Review, 73 Nice Hat. Thanks (Rohrer and Beckman), 170 “Night” (Teasdale), 265 “Night, Death, Mississippi” (Hayden), 226 “Night Sky” (Rui), 267 “Night Thoughts” (Li), 16 “1968 Year’s End and Start” (Peemoeller), 14–15 “No Learning Without Feeling” (Hollander), 73, 89 notebooks. See writer’s notebooks Note Slipped Under the Door, A (Flynn and McPhillips), 223 “Nothing Gold Can Stay” (Frost), 234 “November 18” (Kooser), 240 Nutter, Geoffrey, 50, 256 Nye, Naomi Shihab, 8, 11, 17, 37, 40, 108, 163 O Obama, Barack H., 168, 246–247 observations, 27, 33, 99, 108, 182, 184–187, 189, 193, 200, 207–209, 211–212, 241 “O Captain! My Captain!” (Whitman), 169 occasions day to day, 173–174 festive, 169 friendship, 170–172 grand, 168–169 mournful, 169 “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (Keats), 198, 246 “Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” (Wordsworth), 57, 245–246 odes, 56, 245–250, 253 Odes to Common Things (Neruda), 253

“Ode to a Nightingale” (Keats), 246 “Ode to Athens” (D’Angour), 169 “Ode to Childhood” (Victoria), 248–249 “Ode to Clocks” (Ashlynn), 247–248 “Ode to My 1977 Toyota” (Hamby), 246 “Ode to My Socks” (Neruda), 56, 246 “Ode to Olive Oil” (Neruda), 246 “Ode to Sybil” (Sanjay), 221 “Ode to the Dictionary” (Neruda), 246 “Ode to the Tomato” (Neruda), 246 “Ode to the West Wind” (Shelley), 15, 245 “Ode to the Yard Sale” (Soto), 246, 253 “Ode to Things” (Neruda), 246 Off the Wall (event), 219 Old Elm Speaks (George), 244 Oliver, Mary, 11, 18–19, 52, 54, 67–68, 77, 171–172, 271 Olympic games, 168–169 Olympic Park (London), 169 Omega Institute (N.Y.), 184–185 “O Mission Repo, The” (McDonald), 146 “On a Cave Wall” (Alex), 34 one-sentence poems, 164–165 online poetry writing groups, 137 “On the Road, with Mothers” (Wadler), 101 Ordinary Genius (Addonizio), 19 Orr, Gregory, 20, 75 Other Way to Listen, The (Baylor), 163 Otherwise (Kenyon), 253 “Our Mismatched Spoons” (Dineen), 119 Out of the Dust (Hesse), 37 Outsiders, The (motion picture), 234 “Owl and the Pussy-cat, The” (Lear), 76 Owls and Other Fantasies (Oliver), 171–172 P pace, 149, 165 Painters, Players & Poets (Fullam), 199

Palacio, R. J., 231–232 “Panda’s Cry, A” (Yuv), 127–128 “Parade, The” (Collins), 13 Parker, Charlie “Bird,” 5 Parkhurst, Jason, 214–216 Parnell, Peter, 163 “Passers By” (Thomas), 219 “Pasture, The” (Frost), 93, 96–100 Paterson, Katherine, 176, 230 “Patterns” (Lowell), 262, 264 “Patterns, 2007” (Kellogg), 263–264 Paul, Bradley, 112–113 PBS NewsHour, 4 Peacock, Molly, 20, 104 Peemoeller, Jules, 14–15 performance, 29 “Perhaps the World Ends Here” (Harjo), 246 persona, 108 “Persona Interview” (Michael), 244 personality, 125 personalizing, 184–185 persona poems, 90–91, 127–128, 225–245 perspective, 33 Petrarca, Francesco (Petrarch), 254 Phillips, Robert, 132–133, 145 Picasso, Pablo, 170 Piercy, Marge, 62, 93 Pilo, Erel, 120 Pilo, Shuli, 200–201 Pindar, 168–169, 245 “Pindar, Poetry, and the Olympics” (Armenti), 169 Pinsky, Robert, 4, 21, 30, 61, 67, 75, 119, 128, 130, 162, 167 Pirosh, Robert, 115–116 Place, Vanessa, 146 placement, 164 Place My Words Are Looking For, The (Janeczko), 37 Plath, Sylvia, 142, 226

“Play Bill” (William), 139 “Pocket Poem” (Kooser), 172 Poe, Edgar Allan, 77 poem-a-day, 26 poemcomfort, 79 poemcrazy (Wooldridge), 117, 128, 251, 253 “Poem in My Mailbox, A” (Bayer), 240 poems animated, 199 bookspine, 163 cento, 57, 141–143 chanting tone, 51 composing, 209 connections to, 10–19, 28, 37–38, 40, 47–49, 68–74, 79, 83–85, 94, 99–100, 104, 148, 265, 270 content, 155 conversational, 216 copying, 25–26 end-stopping, 150, 152–154 enjambment, 150, 152–153, 160–162 epigraph, 50 feelings, 52–53 fingerprint, 213–217 form, 56–57, 155 fracturing, 169 gifts of, 26 homage, 102, 245–250 inanimate in, 242–243 invective, 254, 256–261 invocations, 251–252 italics in, 51 lines, 51, 148–150, 152–156, 162–163, 167 living with, 24–25 memorization of, 22–23, 205 motion, 199 movement, 52–53, 55 occasions, for, 168–174

odes, 56, 245–250 one-sentence, 164–165 performance, 29, 64–66 persona, 90–91, 127–128, 225–245 personality, 125 placement in, 164 postcard, 239–242 questions in, 51 re-creating, 169–170 responses to, 38–41, 43–44, 100 seasons, 178–181, 186–187, 191, 193 selecting, 40 serendipitous, 120–122, 124, 126, 130 shape, 50–54, 135 sharing, 26–28, 33–34, 40 slant-rhyme, 154 speaker in, 98–99, 105–110, 226–228 stanza, 50 student requests, 28 titles, 50, 55–57, 148–149, 161, 215 verbs, 66, 162, 168 writing out, 25, 53 Poems Out Loud (Rubin), 30, 67 Poems to Live By in Uncertain Times (Murray), 75, 177 poem whisperer, 174 “Poet, The” (Anne), 194 poetic devices, 7, 91, 128, 165, 192, 239 poetic line, 148–150, 152–157, 163–165, 167, 192 poetic speaker. See speaker in poems poetic taste, 78 poetry “about” factor, 78–80 action, 66 appreciation, 3–6, 46 art and, 33, 196, 198–202, 205, 207–209, 211–213, 218–221 artifacts and, 211–213 blogs, 28, 36–44

Chinese, 15–16, 21–22 clarifying, 88 collections of, 26 complexity, 81 content, 89 craftsmanship, 148 curriculum, in, 77–78 difficult, 76–83, 86, 89, 91, 96 emotion in, 61, 69–70, 74, 89–90 form, 80–82, 135, 149 found, 131–144 free verse, 50, 134, 165, 167 haiku, 189–194 homage, 102 imagery, 126, 128–129, 142, 144, 165, 181–184, 187, 189–191, 196–197, 209 imagistic, 165 influence of, 262, 264–265 intimacy, 46–49 joy in, 21 listening to, 59–63, 159 meaning, 80, 86–87 metaphors, 87–88, 100, 125, 152, 156 metric rules, 50 music and, 199, 222–223 pace, 149, 165 persona, 108 personalizing, 184–185 points of entry, 83–86 reading consistently, 77–79, 265, 267 reinterpretation, 262–265 repetition, 129 rhythm, 21, 59–61, 63, 66, 150, 158–159 rituals, 25–26 satire, 254 science and, 213 sharing, 3–4, 26–27 similes, 87–88, 125 sonnets, 134

sound, 21, 59–67 stories in, 119–120 stream-of-consciousness, 268 syllables, 156 teaching, 8, 13, 18, 25, 80 villanelles, 134 voice, 108–110 “Poetry, Pleasure, and the Hedonist Reader” (Collins), 54, 92 Poetry 180 (Collins), 12 “Poetry 180” website (Collins), 4 “Poetry All Year Long” (Williams), 35 Poetry and Literature Center (Library of Congress), 245 Poetry as Survival (Orr), 20, 75 poetry blogs, 36–44 poetry books, 4 Poetry by Heart (Attenborough), 30, 67 poetry clubs, 27–28 “Poetry for the Mind’s Joy” (Ryan), 4 Poetry Foundation, 30, 44 Poetry Friday, 29, 32–33, 35 Poetry Handbook, A (Oliver), 54, 67 Poetry Home Repair Manual, The (Kooser), 58 poetry in motion, 27 poetry journals, 176–177 Poetry Month, 77–78, 174 Poetry MTWTF, 29, 32 “Poetry of D. H. Rumsfeld, The” (Seely), 135, 145 poetry pairings, 100–104 poetry partners, 27, 94 “Poetry Prompt #79” (Kenny), 224 poetry reading groups, 93–94 poetry readings, 79 poetry resources, 7 Poetry Slam (Glazner), 30 poetry slams, 28–29 poetry teachers, 5–6, 25–28 poetry workshops, 5

poetry writing, 3, 5, 7, 33, 81, 137, 144, 177, 196, 228–232, 235, 239, 250, 256–257, 261, 265 poets connecting with classrooms, 29 friendship, 170 interacting with readers, 87–88 messages in poems, 51 reading their work, 61–62, 83 revision, 81 tools, 32 Poets and Writers, 31 Poet’s Companion, The (Addonizio and Laux), 167 Poets House (N.Y.), 4 poets laureate, 4, 116–117 Poets Online, 31, 269 Poets.org, 170, 177, 199 Poet’s Progress (Jagger), 73 Ponsot, Marie, 142 Pope, Tara Parker, 89 “Portrait of Picasso” (Stein), 170 Post, Katie, 243–244 postcard poems, 239–242 Pound, Ezra, 36, 226 Powell, Eve, 169–170 Powell, John Wesley, 243 power, 227 Power, Brenda, 105 Practice of Poetry, The (Behn and Twichell), 54, 67 “Praise Song for the Day” (Alexander), 246–247 “Prayer” (Kinnell), 51 presence, 109 Present-a-Poem, 28 presentations, 28 presidential inauguration, 168, 246–247 prose poems, 50 “Public Service” (Nathan), 138–139 punctuation, 82, 191 “Puzzling Pottery” (Van Orden), 201

Q Quality Paperback Book Club, 254 questions, 51 Quiet (Parnell), 163 R Raab, Lawrence, 93 Radi os (Johnson), 146 “Rain of Poems,” 169 random words, 121–122, 124, 126, 130 Rankine, Claudia, 119 “Raven, The” (Poe), 77 reading interactive, 128 learning to, through poetry, 22 poem making, and, 211 power of, 48 “Reading a Great Poem” (Jeff), 82, 88–89, 125–126 reading aloud, 25–29, 32–33, 35, 53, 61–66, 79, 81–83, 94–99, 124, 144, 158, 164, 239, 249– 250 reading groups, 93–99 reading/writing blog, 37–44 “Real Me, The” (Adam), 217 Red Dragonfly on My Shoulder (Cassedy and Suetake), 195 “Red Wheelbarrow, The” (Williams), 99 reinterpretation, 262–265 reinvention, 143 Rensin, Emmett, 118 repetition, 63, 129 reportage, 143 Request-a-Poem, 28 research, 228, 233–234, 236, 239, 243 respectful blogging, 36–39 revision, 81, 144, 167, 228, 250 rhymes, 162, 239 rhythm, 21, 59–61, 63, 66, 150, 158–159, 162, 164, 261 Rilke, Rainer Maria, 198

“Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The” (Coleridge), 14 rituals, 25–26 Rivera, Louis Reyes, 30, 67 River of Words Art and Poetry Contest, 242–243 River of Words Educator’s Guide (Michael), 244 Rizzuto, Phil, 132 Rogue Poetry Review, 145 Rohrer, Matthew, 170 Rosen, Kim, 5, 20, 48, 67, 75, 89–90, 126 Rosenblatt, Louise, 86 Rosenthal, Doris, 218–219, 224 Rosenthal, Eli, 218–219, 224 Rose of January, The (Nutter), 50, 256 Roston, Ruth, 223 Rowling, J. K., 48 Rubin, Robert Alden, 30, 67 Ruefle, Mary, 146 Rukeyser, Muriel, 10, 77 Rumi, 10 Rumsfeld, Donald, 135 Ryan, Kay, 4 Ryder, Joanne, 163–164 Rylant, Cynthia, 37 S Salting the Ocean (Nye), 37 “Same Old Love Song” (McPhillips), 57 Sandburg, Carl, 2 San Francisco Examiner, 61 Sasaki, Louise, 202 satire, 254 Saved by a Poem (Rosen), 20, 67, 75 “Say What? You Know” (Jamal), 125 scenes, 236, 248 Schwartz, Lloyd, 122–124 Schwartzman, Madeline, 3, 20, 31 science and poetry, 213

“Scream, The” (Munch), 196–198 sculptures, 200–202 seasons, 178–181, 186–187, 191, 193 Secrets of a Wildlife Watcher (Arnosky), 139 Secret World of Walter Anderson, The (Bass), 140 Seeds from a Birch Tree (Strand), 192 Seely, Hart, 135, 145 sentences, 164–165 September 11, 2001, poetry, 10 serendipitous poems, 120–122, 124, 126, 130 Shakespeare, William, 59, 73, 108, 178, 254 “Shakespeare’s Expletives for Everyday Use” (Barrett), 254–255 shape in poetry, 50–53, 81–82, 135 Shapiro, Dani, 20 Sharing the Seasons (Hopkins), 195 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 15, 87, 92, 245 “Shell of a Cicada, The” (Basho), 192 Shepherd, Reginald, 80, 92 “Short History of Rivers, A” (McCully), 243 Side by Side (Greenberg), 207, 223 Siebert, Diane, 242 Siegel, Lee, 251 Silverstein, Shel, 76 Simic, Charles, 83, 163 similes, 87–88, 125, 165, 239, 250 Simmonds, Kathryn, 58 Simonides, 218 6.5 Practices of Moderately Successful Poets, The (Skinner), 20 “Six Words” (Schwartz), 122–124 sketching, 157–158, 241, 251, 265 “Sketching Trees in Winter” (McPhillips), 180 Skinner, Jeffrey, 20, 122, 158, 254 Skype, 29 slam festivals, 28–29 slant-rhyme, 154, 162 Slate, 135 Smithsonian Education, 224

“Snow” (Dodds), 173 social media, 29 Soji, 195 Something About America (Testa), 37, 40 song lyrics, 121 sonic art, 222 “Sonnet 130” (Shakespeare), 108 sonnets, 134 Soto, Gary, 20, 246, 253 sound, 21, 27, 59–67, 144, 158, 164, 190 “Sound” (Oliver), 67 Sound Check (WNYC), 120–121 Sounds of Poetry, The (Pinsky), 67, 130, 167 Spaces (Parnell), 163 spacing, 144 speaker in poems, 98–99, 105–110, 226–228 speech patterns, 165 Spinach Days (Phillips), 145 “Spring and Fall” (Hopkins), 59–61 Stafford, William, 16–18, 145 “Stealing the Scream” (Youn), 197–198 Stein, Aaron, 131, 137 Stein, Gertrude, 132, 170 Step into the Night (Ryder), 163–164 Stevens, Wallace, 56 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 101, 179 Stewart, Jimmy, 20 Still Writing (Shapiro), 20 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 189 “Stopping by the Mirror on a Christmas Evening” (Powell), 170, 171f “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” (Frost), 169 stories passing on, 18 poetry, in, 119–120 Stories I Ain’t Told Nobody Yet (Carson), 227 “Story of Survival” (Luke), 34 Strand, Clark, 192

Strand, Mark, 54, 199, 253 stream-of-consciousness, 268 students anthologies by, 27 choral reading, 63–66, 174 collaborations, 221 collecting poetry, 26–27, 37 emotional connections to poetry, 89, 129 enthusiasm, 28 focused conversations, 94–99, 103–104 inspiration, 207–208 poemcomfort, 79 poetry appreciation, 37, 77–79, 265 reading aloud, 25–29, 32–33, 35, 53, 63–66, 94–99, 124, 158 reading groups, 94–99 respecting, 32–33, 37–38 social scientists, as, 211–212 writing poetry, 181–182, 185–187, 189, 193–194, 209, 211–214, 216–217, 221–223, 229– 239, 241–242, 247–249, 256–257, 259, 261, 265, 267–268 “Sudden” (Flynn), 51, 57 Suetake, Kunihiro, 195 “Summer Day, The” (Oliver), 18 Swenson, May, 55–56 Swinger of Birches, A (Cox), 19 syllables, 156, 164, 190 “Sympathy” (Dunbar), 13 T Take a Deep Breath (Forges-Ryan), 194 “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” (song), 61 Tang Dynasty (China), 15, 21–22 “Tantrum” (Pilo), 120 taste in poetry, 78 teachers blogs, 28, 36–41, 43–44 reading poetry, 26, 93, 174, 176–177 Teachers and Writers Collaborative, 31

teaching poetry, 32–33, 157–158, 174–177 composing process, 209 focused conversations, 94–99, 103–104 haiku, 192–194 inspiration, 207–208 persona poems, 227–239, 241 postcard poems, 241 preschool, 205 “Tea Party Poems” (Seely), 145 Teasdale, Sara, 265 technology, 36–38 teens, poetry slams, 29 “Telling Time” (McDougall), 68–69 Ten Poems to Last a Lifetime (Housden), 19, 75 Ten Poems to Open Your Heart (Housden), 75 Ten Poems to Say Goodbye (Housden), 75, 177 “Tentative Definitions of Poetry” (Sandburg), 2 Testa, Maria, 37, 40 That Sweet Diamond (Janeczko), 246 Thayer, Ernest, 61 “There” (Hopkins), 41–43, 56 “There Is a Lady Sweet and Kind” (anon.), 74 “They Follow Me” (Connors), 270–271 “Things” (Greenfield), 63 This Place I Know (Heard), 177 Thomas, Alfred, 219 Thomas, Dylan, 61–62 Thomas, Edward, 170 thoughtfulness, 95–96 365Day Subway (Schwartzman), 20, 31 ’Til All the Stars Have Fallen (Booth), 69 timbre, 64 titles, 50, 55–57, 148–149, 161, 164, 215 “To Any Reader” (Stevenson), 101 “To Autumn” (Keats), 246 “To Be of Use” (Piercy), 62, 93 “Today Is a Day of Great Joy” (Cruz), 62

Toklas, Alice B., 132 tone, 238, 264 Townsend, Ann, 54 Tragedy of King Lear, The (Shakespeare), 254 Trampled by Turtles (musical group), 120–121 “Tranquil Night, A” (Li), 15–16 “Transactional Theory of Reading and Writing, The” (Rosenblatt), 86 Transforming Vision (Hirsch), 223 Trethewey, Natasha, 4, 199 trigger words, 128, 130 “Truth About Why I Love Potatoes, The” (McBride), 175–176 Turner, Alberta, 62 Turner, Anne, 227 Turner, Nat, 226 twaiku, 118 “12 Famous Book Titles That Come From Poetry” (Habash), 58 Twichell, Chase, 54, 67, 110 Twitter, 118–119, 130, 137 Twitterature (Aciman and Rensin), 118 “Two Yellow Leaves” (Calley), 193 U Unger, Jay, 222 unleashed (Hempel), 244 V “Valentine for Ernest Mann” (Nye), 40 Valentines (Kooser), 75, 172, 177 Van Gogh, Vincent, 132–133 Van Orden, Linda, 201 Verbatim Poetry, 145 verbs, 66, 162, 239 “Very Short Poem Contest, A,” 120 “Very Short Story Contest, A,” 119 “Via” (Mia), 232–233 victory odes, 168 video conferencing, 29

villanelles, 134 visual art, 196–202, 205, 207–209, 211–213, 218–221 voice, 108–110, 226–239, 242 W Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers (Koren), 192 Wadler, Joyce, 101–102 Wagner, Pamela Spiro, 46–47 “Waiting for My Father” (McPhillips), 184–185 Waldman, Anne, 199 walking, 27, 186–187, 189 “Walking with Dogs” (April), 64–66, 188 “Walter Anderson, Mad Genius” (Samay), 141 “Walt Whitman” (Trampled by Turtles), 121 “Wars” (Little), 38 “Waste Land, The” (Eliot), 178 “Way I See Any Hope for Later, The” (Adoff), 81 “Way of Staying Sane, A” (Kumin), 224 “Weary Blues, The” (Hughes), 73 “Weekend, The” (Peter), 158–161 What Feeds Us (Lockward), 155 What Poets Are Like (Soto), 20 “What’s the Difference?” (CK), 230–231 “What You Do” (Kumin), 51 Wheatley, Phillis, 226 Wheeler, L. Kip, 190 When Writing with Technology Matters (Bedard and Fuhrken), 44 Whitman, Walt, 11, 22, 59, 169, 199, 267–268 Whittemore, Reed, 12 “Who’s Talking and Why?” (Behn and Twichell), 110 “Why Dickinson Didn’t Title” (Mulvihill), 58 Wiggerman, Scott, 58 “Wildlife Watcher” (Yoko), 140 Wild Wings (Yolen), 163–164 Wiles, Deborah, 229 Willard, Nancy, 246 Williams, Ann, 35

Williams, William Carlos, 99, 114, 164–166 Wingbeats (Wiggerman and Meischen), 58 “Winning Words,” 169 “Winter Dream” (Jeremy), 210 Winter Light (McPhillips), 207–209 Winter Morning Walks (Kooser), 195, 240 “Winter Woods” (Laurel), 210 “Woman Sips Coffee at Starbucks, A” (Bernstock), 107–108 Wonder (Palacio), 231–232 Wooldridge, Susan G., 24, 117, 128, 186, 251, 253 Woolf, Virginia, 61 word associations, 147–148 word catchers, 118, 128–129 word choice, 115–122, 124–126, 128–129, 239, 241 “Word Is Dead, A” (Dickinson), 33 wordpools, 117–118 “Words” (Yeats), 113 word salads, 117–118 Words I Chose, The (McNair), 19 Wordsworth, William, 57, 147, 179, 245 “Working Titles” (Simmonds), 58 World Enough and Time (McEwen), 19, 75 World Poetry Day, 118 Worth, Valerie, 57 Wright, Charles, 142, 224 Wright, James, 57 “Writer’s Almanac, The” (Keillor), 30, 132, 145 writer’s groups, 106–107 writer’s notebooks, 8, 27, 33, 53, 181–187, 189, 192–193, 208–209, 211, 216, 241, 249, 257, 268 writing partners, 121 writing poetry, 3, 5, 7, 33, 81, 87, 114, 121, 134, 137–144, 158–161, 167, 181–187, 189, 191– 194, 215–216, 233–234, 236, 250, 256–257, 267–268 Writing Poetry to Save Your Life (Gillan), 19 writing workshops, 32, 187, 251 “Written World, The” (BBC), 169

X Xu, Yuan-Zhong, 16 Y “Yawn, The” (Blackburn), 51–53, 82 Yeats, William Butler, 61, 113, 147 yoga of poetry, 90 Yolen, Jane, 163–164 “You” (Sasaki), 202 You Come Too (Frost), 96 Youn, Monica, 197–198 young readers, 4–5, 21–22 Your Daily Poem, 31 “You Reading This, Be Ready” (Stafford), 17 Z Zedong, Mao. See Mao, Zedong Zen Wave, A (Aitken), 192